06:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Gosh we've talked a lot this week. Here's your weekly round up of MobileRead's events.

Miscellaneous - Announcements

• Merry Christmas

12:07 PM by pilotbob in Miscellaneous | Announcements

Merry Christmas

The moderation team here at Mobileread.com would like to wish everyone a holiday filled with love, joy and peace. We appreciate each and every one of you. Thank you for making this the single best place for information about reading digital content anywhere.

06:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Missed some of our big stories this week? Time to catch up:

E-Book General - News

• Amazon's No. 1 seller for 2013 is Inferno by Dan Brown
• Kindle, Today, $49 (US Only, Special Offers version)
• Smashwords is now distributing to Scribd

09:16 AM by John Carroll in E-Book General | News

This is awesome news! I've used Scribd a little bit, but stopped because I have limited time to tend to all the channels possible. Distributing to them through Smashwords makes me very happy, almost fuzzy even.

I'm also thrilled about the 1 year subscription! Wow!

http://blog.smashwords.com/2013/12/s...agreement.html

The meat of the agreement for authors:

For Scribd’s retail store, the terms are identical to our standard retail agreements. Smashwords authors and publishers will set the price, there will be no discounting, and authors will earn 60% of the list price on all sales. The first 10% of the book, from the cover image forward, will be the free preview sample, similar to most retailers.

Unlike any other subscription service or retailer, Scribd has sweetened the pot by added a secondary sales trigger for the author by providing credit for partial reads. If the subscriber reads 5% more than the first free 10% but less than the additional 20% necessary to generate a full sale, this triggers a credit for partial read. For every ten partial reads, which Scribd calls a “browse,” the author earns credit for a full sale. Since most people read fiction from page one forward, this means if 10 people read just over the first 15% of your book but less than 30%, it’ll generate a full sale. For non-fiction, where readers are more likely to read non-sequentially, they can read 5% of the middle of the book and trigger a browse credit.

06:41 AM by eping in E-Book General | News

Please see the home page of Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/

Maybe only in the US?

04:42 AM by JoHunt in E-Book General | News

A year after "Fifty Shades of Grey" overwhelmed best-seller lists, book buyers were seeking different kinds of thrills.

Dan Brown 's latest Robert Langdon caper, "Inferno," was Amazon.com's No. 1 seller for 2013, the online retailer announced Monday. Khaled Hosseini was second with "And the Mountains Echoed." The best-sellers for kids and teens were Veronica Roth's "Allegiant" and Rick Riordan's "The Houses of Hades."

Other major hits on Amazon.com were "The Cuckoo's Calling," a crime story J.K. Rowling wrote under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, and John Grisham's "Sycamore Row." Sylvia Day's "Entwined With You" was one of the few works of erotic fiction to place high on Amazon's list. Nonfiction favorites included Sheryl Sandberg's "Lean In" and "Things That Matter," an anthology of essays by conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer.

http://news.yahoo.com/dan-brown-39-3...140126654.html

06:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

If you've been absent and are keen to find out what MobileRead was up to this week, check out the links below:

E-Book General - News

• e-book settlement finally approved
• Antitrust suit against Amazon and publishers dismissed...

05:01 PM by fjtorres in E-Book General | News

I know, shocking...
The Digital Reader Blog has a nice summary of the judge's ruling.

http://www.the-digital-reader.com/20...ue-unhindered/

It’s been nearly 10 months since the booksellers filed an anti-trust lawsuit alleging that Amazon and the major publishers had colluded to shut indies out of the market. This suit argued that in agreeing to license content to Amazon which used Amazon’s proprietary DRM, the publishers had effectively shut out indies from a major part of the market. It also argues that Amazon had an illegal monopoly in the ebook market.

Just to put this lawsuit in perspective, let me remind you that it was filed in the midst of an unrelated DOJ anti-trust lawsuit which proved that 5 of the 6 major US publishers had conspired with Apple against Amazon with the goal of raising the market prices of their ebooks. If someone could explain how 5 publishers simultaneously conspired both with Amazon and against Amazon, I would be willing to pay big money. Also, the DOJ disclosed in the summer 2012 that Amazon was investigated as part of the investigation into Apple and the 5 publishers. Furthermore, the DOJ declined to file a lawsuit against Amazon, reporting that they did not find any evidence of wrongdoing.

With that context in mind, it should probably come as no surprise that Judge Rakoff didn’t buy any of the booksellers arguments.

Sadly, Nate went light on the snark this time.

A lot more at the site including this:

Under the Sherman Anti-trust Act, the plaintiffs had to prove that Amazon had a monopoly and that the retailer had acquired or maintained that monopoly “as distinguished from the growth or development as a consequence of a superior product”.

The judge ruled that they failed to prove either point, and in fact the arguments made by the booksellers defeated themselves.

I suppose there are now *two* "corrupt judges in Amazon's pocket".