The New York Times wants to charge you for the content you read online. Faced with declining revenue for their print editions, the NYT needs a way to bring in more money. But is charging for reading the news online the best solution? This question is hard to answer, given that there are so many free news aggregate sites out there that people can go to for their daily news fix.

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Sometimes I just want to throw my hands up in the air and give up. I’m talking about those publishers and authors who are paranoid about their books being pirated if they’re released as ebooks. This ‘strategy’ is not very business smart. Why? Because when a publisher/author refuses to release a book in ebook format for fear of pirating, it gets pirated anyway. I’ve pointed this out in one of my most commented-on posts J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the definition of irony.

Now we can add Stephen King into the mix (yes, that Stephen King, the one who wrote an exclusive ebook for the new Kindle he helped promote). His newest novel ‘Under the Dome’ was released in ebook format several weeks after the print release of the book. Publishers didn’t want the lower ebook price to eat away at the higher hard cover price. Within days of the print release, pirated ebooks of ‘Under the Dome’ were circulating around the internet. In turn, this ate away at print and ebook sales.

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Random House is claiming the ebook rights to a majority of its backlist titles, according to RH chairman Markus Dohle. This move shows, yet again, that authors are better off without a large publishing company. Once you sign over your book to them, they can pretty much do whatever they want.

RH made their intentions known in a letter Dohle sent out to literary agents, which you can find a link to in this Publishers Weekly article (note: link opens up a PDF file). After reading the letter, I found it interesting that the entire first page is filled with corporate marketing propaganda, and then promptly lays down the law that RH has exclusive rights to publish an author’s work in ebook format:

In his letter, Dohle makes clear that RH believes the “vast majority” of its backlist contracts “grant us the right to publish books in electronic formats,” while older agreements “often give us the exclusive right to publish ‘in book form’ or ‘in any and all editions.’

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I continue to be amazed at these large publishing houses who still resist ebooks. Have they learned nothing from the music industry? HarperCollins made a recent announcement that they planned on delaying the release of ebooks for new titles. I really don’t understand their reasoning for wanting to delay the release of ebooks.

In an interview, Brian Murray, chief executive of News Corp.’s HarperCollins Publishers, said that beginning in January or February, HarperCollins will delay the e-book publication of five to 10 new hardcover titles each month. The delays are expected to range from four weeks to six months, depending on the book.

Four weeks to six months? All HarperCollins is doing by making this move is encouraging piracy. I have always maintained that piracy by itself is not the problem, rather it is the symptom of the problem. The problem is publishers not embracing new technology and publishing models and not giving people books in the format they want. If people want to read a new release in ebook format, there is a segment of those readers who will resort to finding a pirated edition.

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There’s been a lot of controversy over the price wars between Amazon, Wal-Mart and Target over their recently adopted practice of selling bestsellers at deeply discounted prices (less than $9.00 for some new releases). Steve Riggio, CEO of Barnes & Noble appears to be unconcerned.

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For many people, it may seem wrong that one can get rich by giving stuff away for free. This is exactly what one science fiction writer and digital evangelist is doing – and he’s the traditional publishing industry’s worst nightmare. I’m referring to Cory Doctorow,  a fellow at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the co-editor of the blog BoingBoing and a science fiction author who sells and gives away his novels for free.

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This is an update to an earlier post I wrote Race to the bottom: Amazon, Wal-Mart see who can sell the cheapest books. Now Target has entered the game and a lot of people aren’t happy about new release hardcovers being priced so cheap at these retailers. The first sign of protest comes from the American Booksellers Association (ABA), who wrote a complaint to the antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

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If you’re looking for dirt-cheap prices on a few upcoming major hardcover book releases, then you’re in luck. Online giant Amazon.com (full disclosure – I’m an Amazon affiliate) and retail giant Wal-Mart are in a heated price war over upcoming titles by some heavy-hitting authors.

For consumers, this is great, especially for the upcoming holiday season right around the corner. Major titles to be released are Stephen King’s Under the Dome; John Grisham’s Ford Country; and James Patterson’s I, Alex Cross – the latest in his ongoing series. For booksellers, publishers and authors though, this is a worrisome trend.

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Science fiction and fantasy author Neil Gaiman is going to write a short story using Twitter. To be more precise, his going to write the first 140 characters of a short story, then let other Twitterers write the rest of the story. The crowd-sourced piece of fiction, once complete, will be compiled by BBC Audiobooks and will be made available on the BBC Audiobooks website as well as iTunes as a free download.

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One of the more disturbing stories I’ve covered over the last few days was a seemingly new policy implemented by the large bookstore chain Barnes & Noble requiring authors to place a link to the B&N website, or risk the large not ordering their books.

My first post on this story Why is Barnes & Noble dictating what authors should have on their website was fairly cautious, as I wanted to avoid adding fuel to a possible rumor (and there are plenty of them on the web). But this story has gained a lot of traction and is disturbing both in its truth and implications for authors.

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