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 →]

I was disappointed by the commentary that greeted this announcement by New Zealand’s National Business Review publisher Barry Colman to start (again) charging for some content. Comment ranged from the reasoned to the vitriolic (see article comments) but fell almost entirely into the “stupid publisher” category. The “stupid publisher” notion has gained wide currency. It [...]

[Read more →]

Spain’s three biggest publishers have joined forces to form a digital distributor with the aim of influencing how the Spanish-language ebook market develops. The three companies — Planeta, Random House Mondadori, and Santillana — collectively control 70% of the Spanish book publishing market and hold worldwide digital rights to most of their Spanish language titles. They’ve launched [...]

[Read more →]

Take a look at the chart behind Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, on stage at the launch of the big-screen Amazon Kindle DX last week. Bezos revealed that, where Kindle editions are available alongside paper editions of books, the  Kindle sales are running at 35% of book sales. What’s more, as the chart shows, there’s been [...]

[Read more →]