How much did eBook prices change after five major publishers agreed to the agency pricing model?

The Department of Justice shared its “findings of fact and conclusions of law” (PDF link) in a long court document this week. The documents included a number of charts created by economics professor Richard Gilbert showing how eBook prices increased once major publishers began selling digital books at the same price across different marketplaces.

Above, you can see the price increases charted by publisher. The lengthy court document also contained emails from major publishing executives, Apple leaders and other people who helped craft the agency pricing model.

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As Little League season unfolds this spring, you can see the “He’s Just a Little Boy” poem by Chaplain Bob Fox tacked to fences at 1,500 baseball diamonds around the country. The photograph of one of those signs (embedded above) has already been viewed more than 55,000 times online.

Farmers Insurance Group agent Joel McKinnon helped spread the inspirational poem nationwide last year. Even though the poem was published more than 70 years ago, these signs will remind generations of kids and parents to support little kids as they learn a sport. Here’s more about how the poem traveled:

I took it upon my self to reach out to Ryon Harms, Director of Social Media forFarmers Insurance - I asked him to look at the activity that this post was getting – after a few attempts Ryon pulled it up – After seeing the viral affect this had he asked if he could post this on the Farmers Insurance corporate Facebook page - “sure I said” – within seconds there were thousands of likes, comments, & shares and a trend that had started on our page carried over … After some discussion Ryon presented me with the idea of having 500 of these signs made and distributed to local communities all over the US  … Farmers posted an application on their corporate page for “fans” to request a sign – More or less instantly the signs were “sold out” and we actually had received nearly 1,500 requests – Next thing you know our 500 sign project turned into 1,500 -

Author James Altucher is letting his fans buy his book with Bitcoin–weeks before you can buy the book with more traditional currencies. According to the author, this is the “first book ever to be for sale ONLY on bitcoin.”

Altucher currently charges 0.1 BTC for a PDF copy of his Choose Yourself book. On June 3rd, you can purchase the book on Amazon using other currencies.

If you are interested in selling your own book with Bitcoin currency, you can contact Altucher for support.

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The advocacy organization AARP will publish a new series of original eBooks, teaming up with  RosettaBooks.

Here’s more about the new partnership:

RosettaBooks has partnered with the AARP to publish a series of original eBooks from the nonprofit organization. RosettaBooks will also help the AARP with various distribution. Together they will publish books on a variety of subjects including: caregiving, brain health, and driver safety. The first titles in the new line published by RosettaBooks are slated to be released this year.

BookLikes, a new book sharing site for readers, has officially gone live.

The company founders spent the past eight months beta-testing it and were able to gather 8,000 users.

Here’s more from the release:

BookLikes is a blog platform designed particularly for people interested in books, with functions dedicated to readers which makes it a better choice for book bloggers than other platforms, e.g. Blogspot, Tumblr or WordPress. The service makes it possible to easily share book reviews using specially designed templates. Users can look for books from the largest bookstores from all over the world, connect books with their writing and shelve them on a personal virtual bookshelf.

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This week, Adecco Creative is hiring a senior editor, while Random House needs a manager of publicity. Palgrave Macmillan is seeking a senior editor, and ABRAMS is on the hunt for a marketing manager. Get the scoop on these openings and more below, and find additional just-posted gigs on Mediabistro.

• Senior Editor Adecco Creative (New York, NY)
• Manager, Publicity Random House (New York, NY)
• Senior Editor Palgrave Macmillan (New York, NY)
• Marketing Manager ABRAMS (New York, NY)
• Senior Marketing Manager St. Martin’s Press (New York, NY)

Find more great publishing jobs on the GalleyCat job board. Looking to hire? Tap into our network of talented GalleyCat pros and post a risk-free job listing. For real-time openings and employment news, follow @MBJobPost.

The 2013 Children’s Choice Book Award winners have been revealed. Jeff Kinney took author of the year award and John Green won the teen book of the year prize.

We’ve linked to free samples of all the winners below. How many have you read? Here’s more from the release:

The Children’s Book Council and Every Child a Reader announced the winners of the sixth annual Children’s Choice Book Awards (CCBAs) at a charity gala benefitting Every Child a Reader in New York City last night.  The announcement is an annual highlight of Children’s Book Week (May 13-19, 2013) as the CCBAs is the only national book awards program where the winning titles are selected by kids and teens. Young readers across the country voted in record numbers for their favorite books, author, and illustrator at bookstores, school libraries, and at bookweekonline.com, casting more than 1,000,000 votes.

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Amazon workers in Germany have called a strike, fighting the online retailer for better pay. The national trade union Verdi will lead the strike.

Reuters had the scoop:

Amazon employs around 9,000 people in Germany and has come under fire from trade union Verdi for refusing to implement a collective agreement on employment conditions, similar to other mail order and retail firms … The union is also pressing for higher basic pay and bigger supplements for night shifts.

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An official trailer has been released for James Franco’s As I Lay Dying film adaptation. We’ve embedded the trailer above–what do you think?

According to Deadline, the story follows “a Mississippi family that sets out to fulfill their matriarch’s final wish.” The movie will screen at the Cannes Film Festival.

Franco directed, acted, and co-wrote the script based on William Faulkner‘s celebrated novel. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Franco said he hopes to “be loyal to the book.”

App marketplaces are filled with great reading and writing tools for kids, but finding the best apps for the kids in your life can be a daunting experience. Fill out the form below to share your favorite app with our readers.

To help our readers find and share better digital material for children, we’ve started a new Recommended Apps for Kids directory. AppNewser has all the details:

Once you fill out the short form, your app suggestion will be stored in our growing database of great apps for kids. We will use this directory to plan features and share new digital tools with our readers. You can also download an Excel version of the directory to sort the results for yourself. I’ve added a few of my favorite apps for kids to get things started. What’s your favorite app for kids?

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