06:25 AM by fjtorres in E-Book General | News

From Publishers Weekly:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/b...nsolvency.html

In the long term, the showdown seemed hardly avoidable, as the owner’s low key commitment had to clash with the plan of the management, to radically renew Weltbild over a period of three years, until 2016, by closing many of its 300 bricks-and-mortar outlets, and instead transform it into Germany’s leading domestic Internet platform for books and media.

Led by CEO Carel Halff, Weltbild had become the number two online book retailer in Germany, behind Amazon, while multiplying its various digital initiatives. Focusing on a strategy defined by digital and Internet sales, Halff was betting early on e-books, introducing devices and promoting an expanding catalogue of titles – which included loads of self-published as well as erotic titles, which again drew harsh criticism from the Church. In 2013, Weltbild became a driving force in the Tolino alliance, a consortium formed around a line of e-readers and tablets, which included not only Deutsche Telekom as a technology partner, but also Thalia as the largest chain book store and a direct competitor. In November, Weltbild also announced plans to extend its share in buecher.de, an online bookselling platform co-owned by the Holtzbrinck group (which seemed to be ready to divest its stake) and Axel Springer.

All these simultaneous initiatives may have overburdened the complex ownership structure, as it required a significant financial commitment in a long term plan. When holiday sales stayed much below expectations, and the required investment skyrocketed from € 60 million ($ 82 million) to an estimated € 160 million ($ 220 million), the owners decided to pull the plug.

More at the source, including the (by now) the obligatory Amazon reference even though Germany is a fixed price market.

They're calling it a "Borders incident" but it sounds more like a B&N scenario given their involvement in Tolino.

07:20 AM by Katsunami in E-Book General | News

Original Article: Nederlandse e-bookverkoop stijgt met ruim 60 procent in 2013

Translation:

In 2013, 60% more e-books were sold as compared to the year before. In total 1.95 million e-books were sold in 2013, compared to 1.2 million in 2012. Boekblad reported that at this moment, e-books are generating about 3.2% of all revenue.

According to Mathijs Suidman, manager Digital Media of Centraal Boekhuis, which distributes almost all Dutch books, the figure is so low because e-books cost less on average. "If you'd look to the number of books sold, they'd make up about 4.6% of the A book market."

Still, the growth is disappointing to him. "I expected that this amount would grow faster - partly because of my expectation that libraries would have started to loan e-books already, beginning last October," says Suidman.

It looks like the market share of e-books is not rising very fast. Figures published earlier by NUTech showed that 4.1% of book revenue was generated by e-books in May 2013.

More than one in five books that are ordered online is digital, says Suidman. The number of e-books on offer rose from 19.230 titles to 28.319. Centraal Boekhuis offers over 80.000 different physical books.

07:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Just in case you've missed anything, here is the list of our frontpage news this week.

E-Book General - News

• Bookish sold to Zola books
• "Barnes & Noble holiday sales drop on Nook slump"

E-Book Readers - Apple Devices

• Kindle for iOS 4.1 released

07:50 AM by John F in E-Book General | News

"Nook segment sales in the nine weeks ended Dec. 28 fell 61%, including a 67% slump in device and accessories sales. Digital content sales were down 27%."

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bar...%20MarketPulse)

12:35 PM by jswinden in E-Book Readers | Apple Devices

Kindle for iOS 4.1 has been released released. This seems to be a major release with lots of newly added features.

ETA:

• Added Page numbers and time left to page footer
• Added notebook filters
• Updated X-Ray
• Redesigned the Dictionary
• Refined the Collections

06:08 AM by fjtorres in E-Book General | News

From the WSJ:
http://online.wsj.com/news/article_e...MDAwNjEwNDYyWj

Zola Books Inc., a fledgling e-books retailer, is buying Bookish, a book site launched last February by CBS Corp.'s Simon & Schuster, Lagardere SCA's Hachette Book Group, and Penguin Group (USA), now part of Penguin Random House. The purchase price wasn't disclosed.

The site so far is losing money on modest revenue, which one person involved in the venture estimated to be under $5 million on annualized basis. "It's fair to say we aren't acquiring it for the revenue," said Joe Regal, Zola's chief executive. "We're a technology company and they created a valuable piece of technology. To make it fly would be great for our company."

Zola itself is a modestly funded startup so the sale price was probably low, as expected of a half-baked, poorly defined effort.

The site's recommendation engine is built around specific book attributes as opposed to consumer purchases. For example, a reader who liked Gillian Flynn's best-selling thriller "Gone Girl" is offered four recommendations, including the late Elmore Leonard's novel "Rum Punch." But the site may need some further tinkering: one of the four recommendations for readers who liked "Gone Girl" is Michael Paterniti's "The Telling Room," a work of nonfiction.

It's going to need a lot of further work.
If they can get the recommendation engine working properly (like the music recommendation engines at Pandora. LAST.FM, etc) they can probably make more money licensing its services to the generic epub ebookstores than selling ebooks.

07:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Once again, our weekly roundup of highlights from the past seven days of MobileRead:

E-Book General - News

• Sherlock Holmes ruled to be (mostly) in the public domain
• Death of Elizabeth Jane Howard

08:39 AM by Bookpossum in E-Book General | News

I was sorry to read of the death of Elizabeth Jane Howard.

Guardian article