E-Books

ABA Meets With Ingram and Publisher Partners for Wi5 DebriefOn Thursday, April 8, ABA senior staff met with representatives from Ingram and 18 publishing houses in order to garner publisher feedback on January's ABA Winter Institute, in San Jose, California. About half of the almost four-hour meeting was devoted to an in-depth discussion with the 29 attendees about the three-day institute, which offered a wide range of educational programming free of charge to ABA bookstore members.

On the cusp of the April 1 switch to an agency model for e-books, negotiations were ongoing between five major publishers and wholesalers, including Ingram, and others in the supply chain. In a communication to IndieCommerce participants, ABA COO Len Vlahos explained that a short-term consequence of the switch would be the delisting of e-books from Hachette, HarperCollins (including Zondervan), Macmillan, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster on IndieCommerce websites.

When Follett Higher Education Group announced a new textbook rental program open to independent bookstores, "we instantly had people signing up," said senior vice president of intellectual properties Gary Shapiro.

Toadstool Bookshops owner Willard Williams recently found out what more than 400 of his customers think about e-books and e-readers. Williams received more than 400 responses to an online survey sent to customers of his three New Hampshire bookstores. Among the key findings: Ten percent of the survey respondents own e-readers. In addition to asking customers whether they own e-readers, the survey also asked questions about e-books, the store's e-commerce site, and the physical bookstores.

Daniyal Mueenuddin Wins The Story PrizeThe winner of the sixth annual Story Prize was announced on March 3 at an awards ceremony in Manhattan. Debut writer Daniyal Mueenuddin accepted the prize for his collection In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (Norton), a book of eight connected stories set in southern Pakistan and centering around the estate of a feudal landowner.The other two finalists were Victoria Patterson (Drift, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and Wells Tower (Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, FSG).

While booksellers were at the Winter Institute a lot was shaking in the e-book world. With something as elemental as what constitutes a book being debated, it's not surprising that distribution models are also in flux. Amazon.com and Macmillan had their very public negotiations over e-book pricing (which saw Amazon suspend sales of Macmillan titles for a time), and Hachette also announced that they, like Macmillan, would base pricing of e-books on an agency model. Here's a quick recap.

Daniel Clancy, director of Google Books, offered a keynote presentation at the Winter Institute's Technology Day that provided booksellers with insights into plans for Google Editions, launching later this year, as well as a deeper understanding of the challenges of the e-book marketplace.

Apple Debuts iPadApple's iPad, which debuted yesterday, looks like a large iPhone, is a half-inch thick, 1.5 pounds, and has a 9.7-inch multi-touch screen. The most basic model is $499 and has a Wi-Fi wireless connection. More expensive models will be offered with more memory and with 3G wireless access from ATT. The iPad has the same operating system as the iPhone and access to its 140,000 applications, including the iBook app, which will link to the iBookstore.

The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) last week published the results of the first of three surveys that examine when, why, how, and where consumers purchase and use e-books and e-readers. Input for the first survey, "Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading Survey," was gathered from hundreds of book buyers -- including teens -- who also identify themselves as e-book readers. Among the BISG survey's key findings: