“The point may soon come when there are more people who want to write books than there are people who want to read them.” New York Times, January 27th, 2009. This is an opening quote from an article about self publishing in the New York Times this week by Motoko Rich about the rise in…
The Friday Project – Overview
The Friday Project is a publishers which was bought by HarperCollins in May 2008 as it teetered on the edge of commercial collapse. Now, just like HarperCollins’ HarperStudios , the London-based independent publishing house, founded by Paul Carr and Clare Christian in June 2004, will operate as a shared profits publisher, with still the possibility…
Espresso Book Machine Arrives in UK Bookstores
Some of you may remember reading on this site almost a year ago about the Espresso Book Machine (EBM). The machine is a printing press that will produce physical books in-store by means of print-on-demand technology. In effect, it is an on-demand book machine linked to an electronic database of published books. Here is the…
The First Cuts: Salutary Scratches or Open Wounds?
I mentioned in an article over Christmas that book retailers in Ireland had performed marginally better in 2008 than on previous profits for 2007. However, early figures suggest that the UK book retail trade recorded profits that were marginally down on last year. There is much discussion amongst UK retailers about the strategy of committing…
The Curious Tale of the Explosive Lulu Books
You may not know the author Jared Ledgard but it would appear his self published books have been attracting some attention over the past year in newspapers here in Ireland and the UK. Here is a link to a news item in The People UK newspaper from January, 2008, by journalist, Daniel Jones. http://www.people.co.uk/news/tm_headline=diy-bomb-manuals-on-sale-with-the-groceries-at-tesco&method=full&objectid=20291628&siteid=93463-name_page.html Oddly,…
Amazon and Booksurge Antitrust Lawsuit – Update
The judge presiding over the forthcoming Amazon/Booksurge antitrust lawsuit has requested both parties legal representatives to attend court in Bangor, Maine. It is not uncommon in Federal lawsuit cases for a judge to make this kind of request. This tends to optimise the Federal court’s time and eliminate parties bringing lawsuits based on frivolous or…
Diggory Dog-gone or The Second Coming
The Diggory Press website has been down since Christmas and it appears all direct ‘Diggory’ listings have been removed from Google’s search engine. It’s unclear at this stage if Diggory Press itself has ceased trading as a publisher or whether it is simply the early signs of a ‘Second Coming’. Over the past year, the…
Author Solutions Purchases POD Publisher Xlibris
Author Solutions, owned by equity investors Bertram Capital, has continued its strategy of development and expansion in the digital print-on-demand publishing world by purchasing Xlibris, a leading publisher in self-publishing services to authors. The purchase was announced yesterday, Thursday, January 8th, by Author Solutions CEO, Kevin Weiss. The purchase figure was not disclosed. “ASI is…