Digital book distributor OverDrive has bought Australian eBook company Booki.sh in a deal whose terms were not disclosed.

The acquisition gives OverDrive access to Booki.sh’s cloud computing platform that distributes eBooks “in the cloud.” Under the terms of the deal, Booki.sh founders/principals Joseph Pearson, Virginia Murdoch and Peter Haasz will join the OverDrive team working from their offices in Melbourne.

Steve Potash, CEO/president of OverDrive CEO, stated: ”Joseph, Virginia and the Booki.sh team have created a fresh, direct and immersive reading experience that uniquely serves the mission of our libraries and schools. Their innovative technologies streamline the access and convenience of eBooks, which will help shape how millions of readers and students enjoy eBooks from OverDrive’s network of thousands of libraries, schools and booksellers in over 20 countries.”

Last year Amazon and Kobo both opened their eBook stores Kindle Store in Spain, but these companies will be facing competition from Spain’s largest telephone operator Telefonica.

After partnering with device maker Mundo Reader to introduce an eInk eReader last summer, Telefonica is now partnering with Spain’s largest publishing group Grupo Planeta. Bloomberg has more: “‘Telefonica will provide the technology and distribution, while Planeta will offer the content,’ Carlos Domingo, director of Madrid-based Telefonica’s product development, said in an interview in Barcelona this week.”

The content will be available in Spain immediately and then in Latin America at a later date. Luis Miguel Gilperez, head of Telefonica Spain, told Bloomberg: “We are preparing different projects using Spain as the platform to launch them.”

John Conley, Xerox’s vice president of publishing, chatted with eBookNewser about how eBooks are changing the publishing industry and what affect this is having on students.

EBN: How are eBooks changing the publishing industry?

JC: The most important impact for book publishers is that eBooks are providing a new and sustainable revenue stream, which has a different economic model than printed books. eBooks are not dependent on bricks-and-mortar stores or physical warehouses for availability or delivery. They represent a virtual inventory management model with no waste, excess inventory risk or returns. Today the overall mix of eBooks and traditional physical books is yielding a more profitable result than physical books alone. Read more

Digital publisher Open Road Integrated Media has partnered with Ingram Publisher Services and Lightning Source, Ingram Content Group companies, to distribute print versions of its “E-riginal” eBooks.

Beginning in March, select eBook original titles from Open Road will be available in print. This includes: Home in the Morning and One More River by Mary Glickman; The Replacement Wife by Eileen Goudge, Madboy by Richard Kirschenbaum; Listen to Bob Marley: The Man, The Music The Revolution by Bob Marley and Cedella Marley, The Habit by Susan Morse and The Man in the Empty Boat by Mark Salzman.

Christopher Davis, Chief Operating Officer, Open Road Integrated Media, stated: “Since our inception, we have offered print-on-demand versions of all our E-riginals and of a small number of e-books of out-of-print titles. We find it is now time to broaden our reach into the retail space.”

eBook social networking site Copia is responding to Amazon removing almost 5,000 eBooks represented by the Independent Publisher’s Group from its store, by running a sale on some of those eBooks.

The Copia newsletter explains: “Recently, a very big bookseller has stopped selling eBooks from the Independent Publishers Group. Why? Allegedly because the scrappy, innovative IPG refused the bookseller’s ‘laws of the jungle’ pricing demands. Copia salutes IPG for protecting their authors. Check out our sale of IPG classics and bestsellers.”

As part of the sale, Pamela Des Barre‘s I’m With the Band is $8.78, John Austin‘s So Now You’re a Zombie: A Handbook for the Newly Undead is now $6.99 and Ann Fairbairn‘s Five Smooth Stones is now $10.94.

Since last week, when IPG announced the news that Amazon did not renew its contract, the publishing industry has been responding. Author Jim Hanas, whose book was removed from the Kindle Store, responded by removing the Amazon buy button from the website for the book Why They Cried.

Digital publishing site Smashwords has updated its policy, requiring certain restrictions to erotica content published on its site, because of pressure from PayPal.

Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, explains the new terms in a letter posted on the site: “…we are modifying our Terms of Service to clarify our policies regarding erotic fiction that contains bestiality, rape and incest…PayPal is requiring Smashwords to immediately begin removing the above-mentioned categories of books.”

Coker goes on in the letter to explain that PayPal’s enforcement division contacted Smashwords on February 18th, “with an ultimatum.”  He writes: “As with the other ebook retailers affected by this enforcement, PayPal gave us only a few days to achieve compliance otherwise they threatened to deactivate our PayPal services.”

For more details on the new policy, and to read the entire letter, follow this link. (Via TechCrunch).

Bookboon.com, a free eBook website based in Denmark, reported this week that its site traffic grew by 500% over nine months of 2011. The site, which has free textbooks, business books and travel guides in about a dozen languages, expects to penetrate 10% of the U.S. market share by Q3 2012.

The press release explains more: “Bookboon.com has grown globally by over 500% when comparing January 2011 to January 2012, and the company expects more than 50 million downloaded eBooks in 2012.”

Thomas Buus Madsen, COO of Bookboon.com, stated: “Our users feel our concept is worth sharing with friends, especially because all our content is free, platform independent and does not require user registration.”

Brian Brushwood’s Scam School: Volume 1, a collection of magic tricks won the “Best Overall eBook” in digital publishing company Vook’s eBook Creation Contest. Today, the company announced the winners of the contest, which was only open to beta users, received 584 eBook entries.

Joey O’Connor’s book The Grove Center for the Arts & Media won the “Best Designed” eBook and for his title Create: Transforming Stories of Art, Life and Faith. Stephen B. Lewis won the award for “Best Content” for his eBook “Pocket Stones,” which was written by Barbara-­Ann G. Lewis and illusrated by Barbara Polk.

The contest is part of Vook’s revamping of its digital publishing platform, a multimedia tool for publishing eBooks. As part of the revamp, the company listened to feedback from its beta users, to make the process of creating eBooks with its system easier. The publisher did away with 200 bugs in the system and added 31 new features, which were recommended by users.

Literary agent Scott Waxman, founder of Diversion Books, explained how he works with the platform in a statement: “We used the Vook platform to quickly create Mark Cuban’s eBook How to Win at the Sport of Business in only a few hours. With Vook, we can create eBooks with more control and great attention to quality.”

Digital publisher Open Road filed an answer to HarperCollins’ complaint against the digital publisher surrounding the rights to the eBook edition of Julie of the Wolves.

HarperCollins is suing Open Road claiming that a 1971 contract with author Jean Craighead George gives them the rights to the eBook.

Open Road released the following statement: ” We are confident that we have secured all necessary eBook rights from the author Jean Craighead George and that we will prevail.  HarperCollins’ claim is nothing but an attempt to seize rights that were never granted to it and to change the existing law with respect to eBook rights.  Since the rights in question arise from the 1971 contract between Jean Craighead George and HarperCollins, Ms. George has asked to intervene in the action as a Defendant. We are confident that we and Ms. George will succeed in this action.” Read more

Open Road Integrated Media is publishing an eBook original memoir from best-selling writer Mark Salzman. The Man in the Empty Boat is about a year that Salzman spent suffering from anxiety, panic attacks and then was faced with the death of his sister.

Salzman described the book in a statement: ”The piece began not as a book but as notes for a monologue that I performed at the Sun Valley Writer’s Conference in 2010. Jeffrey Sharp, president of Open Road, happened to be in the audience that day. He’s a dad like me and the story seemed to hit him dead center. His enthusiasm for the piece really lifted my spirits, and convinced me to try writing a longer version of it for publication. Follow the enthusiasm, that’s my motto.”

The title goes on sale tomorrow and will include an eBook, as well as a print-on-demand version.