The new color ereader I told you about last week now has an official model name.

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I was just over at MobileRead, sharing the good news about Kobo’s new ereader, when I found out about the Pocketbook 740.

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Amazon may have put Kindle development on hold for the duration, but Kobo has not.

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It took 3 weeks longer than I expected, but the Big Five Publishers have been named as co-defendants in the Amazon ebook price-fixing lawsuit.

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Barnes & Noble has always offered ebook royalty terms which were better than Amazon’s, and now they’re a lot better.

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Earlier today I set out to write a round up post on the topic of feed reader apps. I am trying to devote Sunday morning to staying in bed and catching up on my news feeds on my iPad, and I thought that would be a great reason to download all the apps, test them, and then write a blog post talking about which one was best.

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Remember last November when author groups such as ALLi, SFWA, and The Authors Guild wrote an open letter to Amazon protesting Audible’s returns and exchange policies?

We’re finally seeing some progress on this front. While Amazon is still actively promoting returns as a benefit of subscribing, they did just announce on the ACX blog that they are going to launch a new sales dashboard in March 2021. The new dashboard will break out returns by title. (Previously, Audible had provided no info on returns, instead hiding the info by showing only net sales.)

I have the ACX blog post at the end of this post.

On a related note, last November Audible changed its return policies so that creators would still get paid if a customer returned an audiobook months after buying it.

We’re committed to making Audible and ACX the best experience it can be for our creative community, and we’ve heard your feedback. We have been hard at work building a new reporting system to reflect details on returns, including returned units by title. Starting March 2021, you’ll be able to see this data on your ACX Sales Dashboard. This data will also be included in your monthly financial statements for March 2021 and the following months. We appreciate your patience as we invest the time and resources to make these updates to the dashboard and our backend systems, so that we can expand reporting details for our thousands of creators. As of January 1, 2021, we are paying royalties on any return made more than 7 days after purchase.

We are also making other changes to our ACX policies to provide more flexibility, which we know is important to you. Effective February 1, ACX Rights Holders of DIY or Pay-for-Production titles that have been on sale for 90 or more days can convert their distribution type from exclusive to non-exclusive. In addition, all ACX Rights Holders will have the option to terminate after 90 days of distribution, but Rights Holders with Royalty Share or Royalty Share Plus deals must provide Producer consent when making their request. More details about this update will come in the payments letter that will be sent next week.

image by athriftymrs.com via Flickr

News broke this week that Amazon is being sued for colluding with five major publishers to inflate prices. The case was filed by the same law firm that lead the lawsuit against the Price Fix Six back in 2011.

The law firm of Hagens Berman is accusing the world’s largest retailer of colluding to artificially inflate the retail price of e-books through anticompetitive agreements with the nation’s five largest book publishers.

This is a fancy way of saying that the Agency 2.0 contracts, which gave publishers control over their ebook prices, were negotiated conspiratorially, and that the MFN clauses in those contracts illegally helped keep Amazon in a dominant position in the US ebook market.

This case has been well-covered elsewhere, so I will merely link to various sources before getting into a discussion.

• Here’s the press release.
• Here’s the actual filing.
• Coverage in The Guardian.

Here’s the biggest problem with this lawsuit:

Five independently negotiated contracts does not a conspiracy make.

That, folks, is the Achilles heel of this lawsuit. I agree that consumers were harmed by these contracts, yes, but this lawsuit makes a big deal about a conspiracy without presenting any evidence that Amazon conspired.

Sure, that information could come out later, but it probably does not exist. Amazon is well-known for keeping its negotiations so secret that parties are not even allowed to talk about the process, much less the terms agreed to or the information exchanged.

And these lawyers think Amazon conspired with publishers?

Pull the other one, it has bells on.

Furthermore, while I want this lawsuit to be decided in favor of consumers, it probably won’t result in the contracts getting tossed. That is my desired goal, but I don’t see it happening. (Unless of course Amazon also wants the contracts thrown out, so it settles the suit and switches sides in the lawsuit.)

In any case, we are in for a very entertaining 6 to 8 months.

image by luckypines via Flickr

The Book Designer is a blog which most authors should know. Founded by Joel Friedlander, this blog has been around for over ten years now, and in that time it has dispensed sage advice from dozens of experts (including myself).

For the past couple years I have been an occasional contributor to The Book Designer, which is how I found out that The Book Designer was sold just before Christmas. This has not yet been publicly announced (and I don’t know why not) but I just learned that Chandler Bolt bought it.

I can’t really say I know Chandler, but I have interacted with his staff at Self-Publishing School. A few times now, we have talked about a guest post, but so far nothing has jelled. I am not terribly familiar with that site (it’s way out of my price range) but I did find a couple reviews.

Update: Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware tweeted this when I told her the news. She also directed me to BBB complaints about Bolt’s school.

Whoa, really? I may have to reconsider recommending that blog. I periodically get questions about Chandler Bolt and his "school" (mostly as a result of spam-style solicitations) and I've gotten one pretty serious complaint (person also complained to BBB https://t.co/9NbuGaUwKR )

— Victoria Strauss (@victoriastrauss) January 12, 2021

If you’ve worked with Chandler Bolt, or used his Self-Publishing School, I would love to hear about your experiences.

No plans have been announced for  the future of The Book Designer, but I do know that publication of new blog posts has been suspended for the time being (I had a guest post scheduled for 4 January).

Edit: I have been asked to clarify the sale:

FYI – just to clarify, Book Design Templates https://www.bookdesigntemplates.com/ and Author Toolkits https://authortoolkits.com/ were not a part of the sale to Chandler Bolt of the Self-Publishing School and both remain under the ownership and control of Joel Friedlander and Tracy Atkins.

NetGalley sent out an email today (and put a notice on their home page) informing users that the e-galley service has been hacked on Monday. The hackers defaced the NetGalley home page, and they also may have made off with a backup copy of the NetGalley database.

Here’s the text of the email, which can also be found on the NetGalley website. (There’s also an FAQ.)

Dear NetGalley Member,

It is with great regret that we inform you that on Monday, December 21, 2020 NetGalley was the victim of a data security incident. What initially seemed like a simple defacement of our homepage has, with further investigation, resulted in the unauthorized and unlawful access to a backup file of the NetGalley database.

It is with an abundance of caution that we wanted to let you know this incident may have exposed some of the information you have shared with NetGalley.

The backup file that was impacted contained your Profile information, which includes your login name and password, name and email address. Also, if supplied by you, your mailing address, birthday, company name, and Kindle email address. We currently have no evidence of the exposure of any of this data, but we cannot at this stage rule out the possibility. We expect that you may have many additional questions–below are the questions we would have if we received this email.

Please be assured that we take the security of our members' information very seriously and we sincerely regret that this incident occurred. We immediately reviewed our security standards and just implemented further means to protect your data. The next time you sign in you will be prompted to change your password.

We appreciate your understanding, and thank you for your support. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have other concerns. We wanted to provide you with this information as soon as possible, but like most companies, our team will be offline during the holidays–we will absolutely be available to answer your questions on December 28th. We hope you have a wonderful holiday.

All best,
The NetGalley Team

Google sent out an email today, bringing our attention to their new sales data page.

Dear Partner,

We’ve redesigned how sales data appears in your Google Play Books Partner Center account. In the new Analytics page, you can quickly and easily see an overview of your sales.

This new functionality allows you to view and analyze your sales data by units sold or earnings. You can also filter your sales data by title, book format, country, and custom date ranges.

Additionally, we’ve added new charts displaying Top selling titles, Average sale price, and Top geographies.

You can visit the Analytics tab in your Partner Center now to explore this functionality.

Thanks for being a part of the Google Play Books publishing community.

Have you tried it yet?

COVID-19 has claimed one more elderly victim.

Reed Expo, the parent company of BookExpoAmerica, NY ComicCon, and other trade shows, has announced that they are killing BookExpo, BookCon, and UnBound.

Dear BookExpo attendees,

We hope when you read this email that you and your loved ones are safe and healthy.

During the past eight months, the impact of COVID-19 has been felt in both our personal lives and the way we do business. It has forced all of us to navigate a new landscape, and sadly forced all of us to say goodbye to many beloved businesses. At the same time, we have seen glimmers of hope and ingenuity, as Bookstores, Retailers, Librarians, and Educators find new and creative ways to serve their communities.

COVID-19 forced us to cancel our in-person BookExpo, BookCon, and UnBound 2020 events. While we missed not seeing old friends and colleagues in person, there was no doubt that this was the correct choice. BookExpo Online brought us together virtually to celebrate our love of books and remind us that there are other, new ways to gather to support the stories and community we hold dear.

As we look toward 2021, we are all wondering what the world will look like. As Event Director, I am tasked with the challenge of how and when to gather the industry together in a manner that is productive, cost effective, and safe. Together with the management team, we have reached the conclusion that planning an in-person event for 2021 is unfortunately not possible based on the current environment.

The COVID-19 pandemic arrived at a time in the life cycle of BookExpo where we were already examining restructuring our events to best meet our community’s needs. The Trade industry has evolved so much in the past decade, and it has long been apparent that BookExpo needs to reflect those changes.

What does that mean for the future? It means we need to pause, review, and rebuild. The BookExpo, BookCon, and UnBound events in their prior iterations will retire and will not take place in 2021. It is our intention that the shows will re-emerge in the future in a format that delivers better value to our customers with a blend of in-person and virtual offerings. These new events will be built upon the tremendous successes and learnings of the past year’s virtual initiatives. We will no longer be limited by geolocation and we will be able to connect this industry through multiple touch points throughout the year.

The thing about BEA is that it was half-dead already. As Reed said in their statement, the trade show had long since stopped being relevant. I had not attended since the year before the show was held in Chicago, and I was only planning to go this year so I could spend a week in NYC as a vacation. (I did have a plan for networking with publishers, but the vacation was the deciding factor.)

If you live within driving distance of a major metro area, the odds are very good that there already was a event you could go to which filled the same needs as BEA. (Between DC, Richmond, and Maryland, I am blessed with around 50 such events.)

Really, the only reason BEA was big was that book publishing industry was concentrated in NYC.

But given how the industry has been decentralizing over the past 15 years (thanks to the internet, there’s no reason to pay for expensive real estate or operating costs any more) it was only a matter of time before BEA lost all relevance.

The death of this trade show was really only a matter of time.

P.S. If it does come back, I would bet that we will see it revived as smaller local trade shows and conferences – you know, events you could go to in the middle of your work day, and not as a business trip.

image by Military Truck Guy via Flickr

The hot news in the publishing world today is that one of the world’s largest media conglomerates just got a little bigger.

Bertelsmann, the parent company of Penguin Random House, is buying Simon & Schuster for just over $2 billion USD.

Bertelsmann, the international media, services, and education company, is further expanding its global content businesses with the acquisition of the publishing house Simon & Schuster. Bertelsmann’s global trade book publishing group, Penguin Random House, is purchasing the book publishing business from the media company ViacomCBS for $2.175 billion. Simon & Schuster strengthens Bertelsmann’s footprint globally, and particular in the U.S., its second-largest market. Simon & Schuster employs around 1,500 people worldwide and generated revenues of $814 million in 2019. It publishes works from well-known authors and public figures including Hillary Clinton, John Irving, Stephen King, and Bob Woodward. The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to close during 2021. Bertelsmann will pay the purchase price in cash from existing liquid funds. Simon & Schuster will continue to be managed as a separate publishing unit under the Penguin Random House umbrella. Jonathan Karp, President & CEO of Simon & Schuster, and Dennis Eulau, COO and CFO, will continue at the helm of the publishing house.

I know that most will frame this story in terms of the Big 5 becoming the Big 4, but I don’t think that is really an accurate description.

The thing about the Big 5 is that they aren’t really that big. There are many larger or comparable-sized publishing companies, including US publishers such as Scholastic and HMH. Also, all of the remaining "Big 5" are actually part of larger international publishing conglomerates. Hachette belongs to Legardere, PRH and S&S are part of Bertelmann, Macmillan belongs to Holtzbrink, and HarperCollins belongs to Newscorp.

The Big 5 (now the Big 4) are run as parts of a larger whole, and referring to them in terms of their relative size in the US market is misleading at best.

Or at least, it is misleading to those outside the industry. If you are in the book publishing industry you’re going to notice a change in everything from reduced competition for new books to lower fees paid to service providers to the size of booth at book fairs (publisher booths have been getting smaller for years now, and this will probably accelerate the trend).

This deal is bad news for everyone except Bertelsmann’s stockholders.

image by ActuaLitté via Flickr

2020 was a strange year, for obvious reasons.

Many of us spent a lot of 2020 in lockdown, either trying to keep up with work or looking for a new job.

Some turned to streaming services such as Netflix (for example, I subscribed to Disney Plus so I could finally watch The Mandalorian, only to discover the writing was terrible). Others spent their time learning new skills, while many took this an opportunity to dive into new books and read more.

How did COVID-19 change our reading habits? Which countries read the most this year? And what books were we reading?

Here are a few of the highlights from the infographic.

• India reads more than any other country, followed by Thailand and China.
• Printed books continue to drive more revenue than eBooks or audiobooks. However, physical books sales did dip because of COVID-19 (not surprisingly).
• Romance is our genre of choice, with one-third of all mass market fiction books being romance novels.
• 35% of the world read more due to COVID-19.

Check out the infographic below to learn more about world reading habits in a year like no other.