Digital Publishing

Marvel has inked a deal with digital comics platform comiXology, giving them the exclusive right to distribute single issue English-language digital comics for the publisher worldwide.

The new partnership will introduce the online store front Marvel Comics Shop, which comiXology will power. Here is more about the shop from Marvel.com:

First, there was Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited in 2007. Then, the Marvel Comics app was launched on iPhones and iPads in 2010. Now, welcome to a bold new era in digital comics as Marvel is proud to announce the launch of the new digital comics store on Marvel.com. For the first time ever, you can now purchase Marvel’s digital comics and collections on marvel.com and read them anytime, anywhere, including on the Marvel Comics app for iOS or Android devices.

Readers will have continued access to Marvel’s comics that they have already purchased, through apps (including apps for iOS, Android and the Kindle Fire), as well as on comixology.com.

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Digital publishing company Vook has launched a new eBook platform that publishers and authors can use to create and distribute interactive digital books.

Mattew Cavnar at Vook blogged about the news: “Today we opened Vook to the world, enabling anyone who visits our site to access our platform and create great looking eBooks, distribute them to the major marketplaces, and track their sales.”

The tool lets users build eBooks by uploading text, images, drawings and even videos. Users are guided through a step-by-step process for layout, design and previewing the book. Once the book is built a user can create an ISBN, add metadata and descriptions to help market the book. And finally, the tool lets a user either export a file to self-publish on their own or publish to the better known eBook retailers. Read more

Online publishing community has launched a new ecommerce platform that will help self-published authors sell their eBooks.

Powered by a company called Elastic Path, the new platform lets readers checkout without creating a registration and has international support for checkout in different languages and currencies. In addition, there are new marketing tools for authors. Authors using the platform can publish their works to Lulu.com, as well as to the Kindle Store, iBookstore and the Nook Store.

Bob Young, CEO of Lulu.com, stated: “We’re constantly looking for ways to make it easier for our customers to take advantage of the ever-increasing opportunities in publishing today, from easily creating print and eBooks, to expanding author reach to more places.”

Hachette Livre  – which includes both the Hachette Book Group and Hachette UK — is joining the Readium Project, the International Digital Publishing Forum’s new open source initiative. The move will make Hachette’s eBooks EPUB3 ready.

Hachette’s press release explains more: “The Readium Project aims to ensure that open source software for handling EPUB 3 publications is readily available, to accelerate adoption of EPUB 3 as the universal, accessible, global digital publishing format. This will be achieved by building on WebKit, the widely adopted open source HTML5 rendering engine.”

Pierre Danet, Senior digital  technology officer, stated: “Hachette Livre’s technology teams are excited about participating in the design of the ‘missing link’ that will enable EPUB3 adoption with open source software.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Online publishing site Blurb earned its authors $1 million in profits in 2011 on the sales of almost 100,000 eBooks in 2011. The company created the above infographic to illustrate some key metrics including that 3 million users previewed Blurb books online using a tool called BookShow.

The company’s press release explains more about its profits: “Author demand to self-publish books of all kinds continues to rise: Blurb’s customer base grew by 44% in 2011, and the company shipped more than 1.8M books to 69 countries. The success of Blurb authors reinforces the market readiness for the self-publishing model.”

Blurb also reported that it experienced an average of 2,000 downloaded books per week in 2011 for its eBook line.

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.