The online-only paper Christian Science Monitor came out with this interesting article, calling the Amazon Kindle "a Trojan horse". I first read about the article from this post by my good, ebook-loving friends over at Teleread.

After reading the article, and then re-reading it a few times, this excerpt really stuck out:

…Kindle is the kind of technology that challenges media freedom and restricts media pluralism. It exacerbates what historian William Leach calls "the landscape of the temporary": a hyper mobile and rootless society that prefers access to ownership. Such a society is vulnerable to the dangers of selective censorship and control.

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The largest retail bookseller in the US acquired Fictionwise, the largest indie outlet for ebooks, this according to this article at Publishers Weekly. This move effectively throws B&N into the ebook game and probably into direct competition with Amazon and its Kindle 2.

However, beyond the news of this transaction is both praise and criticism. Critics say that they admired Fictionwise for being an independent force in ebook retailing. According to one post on the Teleread blog, Fictionwise was also admired for being more willing to work with small publishers:

Not everyone sees full positives here. "Fictionwise was the big independent in the industry, and also the company most willing to work with small publishers and non-DRM," Rob Preece of BooksForABuck.com, a small e-publisher, said in a TeleRead comment. "I’m sorry to see them go as an independent force, and not especially happy that BN made the purchase as they haven’t traditionally been especially friendly to small publishing.

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Online retailer Amazon.com has decided to let authors decide if they want the text-to-speech feature to be a part of their ebooks on Amazon’s new Kindle 2. This comes after the Authors Guild raised a ruckus and even threatened legal action, arguing that the text-to-speech feature infringed on the rights of audiobooks.

According to this article from Yahoo!, Amazon is already working on the changes:

Amazon said it is making modifications to allow those holding rights to written works to decide on a title-by-title basis whether to allow Kindle 2 devices to read passages aloud using text recognition software.

This comes after whining from the Authors Guild:

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With all this talk of doom and gloom surrounding the economy nowadays, it’s always nice to read some good news for a change – especially if that good news is in the publishing industry.

According to this Publishers Weekly article, Harlequin did have a pretty good year:

Harlequin was a bright spot for parent company Torstar in 2008. Revenue at the romance publisher rose 2.2%, to C$472.9 million ($379 million), while operating profit increased 11.2% to C$67.4 million. Sales in the company’s North American retail and Overseas segments were up in the year, offsetting declines in the North American direct-to-consumer segment. Harlequin also had a slight benefit from the strengthening of the U.S. dollar.

The article also points to strong ebook sales as well:

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When I wrote this post about the new and improved Kindle 2, I hardly gave much thought about its text-to-speech functionality, other than noting that the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) would probably applaud the feature.

However, I failed to see this from the point of view of the Authors Guild, who claims that the Kindle 2 is infringing on the copyright protection of audiobooks. Then I read this article from Yahoo!:

The challenge revolves around audiobooks, which are treated separately from printed material from a copyright standpoint. A retailer can’t record a copy of a book on a CD and sell it or bundle it along with a novel without paying a separate fee, just as buying a copy of an audiobook doesn’t entitle you to a free copy of the printed version.

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Sometimes I miss a unique angle on an article I’m reading for this blog. I must have been asleep at the wheel when writing this post about self-publishing. The New York Times article was about how self publishing is doing pretty well because of so many writers are willing to pay to see their work in print.

Today, I came upon this interesting article from WritersWeekly.com that talks about the angle I missed: The CEO of self-publishing company Lulu, Robert Young, had some interesting things to say about his company’s own customers:

Indeed, said Robert Young, chief executive of Lulu Enterprises, based in Raleigh, N.C., a majority of the company’s titles are of little interest to anybody other than the authors and their families. "We have easily published the largest collection of bad poetry in the history of mankind," Mr. Young said.

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Self-publishing has long been the bastard child of the publishing industry. That could be changing now. More and more authors who self-publish are finding success after traditional publishing houses offer lucrative contracts for their self-published books. And most of these cases, the manuscript in question was rejected over and over before the author took matters into his/her own hands.

That is the story of Lisa Genova, who tried to get her book Still Alice (aff link) into the hands of agents and publishers before turning to self-publishing. Her story, in part, is featured in this article from the New York Times about the world of self-publishing:

When Lisa Genova, a former consultant to pharmaceutical companies, wrote her first novel, "Still Alice," a story about a woman with Alzheimer’s disease, she was turned down or ignored by 100 literary agents.

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Online retailing giant Amazon.com will stop selling ebooks in PDF and Microsoft Reader formats, according to this article from Publishers Weekly. This means that all ebooks sold by Amazon will be either in its proprietary Kindle format, or the Mobipocket format.

Amazon.com has notified its publisher and author clients that it plans to cease offering e-books in the Microsoft Reader and Adobe e-book formats. In the future, the online retailer says it plans to offer only e-books in the Kindle format (for wireless download to its Kindle reading device) and the Mobipocket format, both of which are owned by Amazon.

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One facet of ebooks that still mystifies me (and many others, I assume) is how ebooks are priced. When I’m shopping around for a good book to read on my trusty iPhone or Sony Reader, I’m always amazed at the large span of ebook pricing – from free for public domain works, to around the same price as a hardcover for a new release and/or bestseller, and everything in between.

I find it interesting to see what others think of this problem as well. I came across this interesting post from a blog called Brave New World. Here’s a brief snippet:

Some may say that publishers are trying to reduce the digital margin given to resellers and using this to offset their digital costs. Others would argue that there is a reluctance to get dragged into the current discounting fiasco on physical books that is rife in markets such as the UK. However, given that the ebook is often a carbon copy of the physical book with no extras what is the price comparison with it and the price to the consumer?

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There’s really nothing new or surprising from Publishers Weekly about holiday sales from the nation’s two largest booksellers: Barnes & Noble and Borders. I got my usual email update yesterday and in this article, PW said sales were bad for both booksellers:

Store sales fell 5.2% at Barnes & Noble in the nine week holiday period ended Jan. 3, dropping to $1.1 billion. Same store sales at the nation’s largest bookstore chain fell 7.7%; B&N had predicted that comp sales would fall between 6% to 9%.

By most accounts B&N is still in pretty good shape with an impressive balance sheet, good leadership and tight control over spending. Borders fared a little worse over the holiday shopping season, which only seems to add insult to injury to the chain after a year of ups and downs:

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