Just a day after opening its Kindle store to non-US publishers, Amazon has responded to emerging competitive pressures and cut its slice of Kindle sales income from 70% to 30%, meaning publishers and authors using its self-service Digital Text Platform will now get the lion’s share of the sale.
There are hooks. The old 30% royalty [...]

[Read more →]

If you’ve been “lucky” enough to hear one of my presentations recently, you’ll quite likely have heard me plugging Smashwords.com as a great way to dip a toe in the ebook waters with no cost, virtually no pain and very author- and publisher-friendly terms.
So it was good to hear this piece of news from Smashwords [...]

[Read more →]

A notice from the New Zealand Society of Authors (NZSA) highlights a problem that will affect most non-US authors and publishers if the proposed Google Books Settlement is ratified by a US court later this year.
“Unless New Zealand authors or publishers formally opt out of the settlement, or formally opt in but request Google not [...]

[Read more →]

Amazon’s move to pull copies of George Orwell’s 1984 novel without warning from Kindles has opened it up to attack from civil libertarians and others concerned about the Big Brother implications. But a civil liberties argument is also being used to challenge the hated Digital Rights Management system that underpins the Kindle. And in a [...]

[Read more →]

European regulators are asking publishers for feedback on how they see the proposed Google Books settlement. The move comes soon after the US Justice Department said it was investigating Google for anti-trust concerns.
More on the European move here.
Twitter It!

[Read more →]