College textbook publisher Flat World announced today that use of it’s openly-licensed college textbooks will double for the Fall 2010 academic year, and publishers are sure to be paying attention. Flat World’s textbooks are published under an open Creative Commons license, as opposed to the industry-standard “all rights reserved” copyright.  Faculty can pick and...
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According to internal merchandising material “leaked” on the blog “i heart cvs” (yes, that exists), CVS stores will be selling a $179 e-reader beginning in early September.  According to engadget, the 7-inch LookBook e-reader will have 512MB of storage space, a full keyboard and access to Kobo’s e-book store. And of course earlier this...
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A lawsuit covered this week by People’s Daily highlights challenges in e-book licensing and digital copyrights in the Chinese market.  The outcome of the case could have ramifications on e-book markets around the world;  DisplaySearch, a US market analysis firm, recently estimates that China will have 3 million e-readers this year, about 20 percent...
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Or are they? Trade eBook sales in the United States dropped from $91,000,000 in Q1 10 to $88,700,000 in Q2 10, according to The International Digital Publishing Forum. The numbers represent quarterly US trade retail eBook collected by IDPF in conjunction with the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and represents only trade eBook sales...
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Should e-book royalties be the same as print book royalties?  It’s an ongoing argument.  Here is an interesting perspective from the Bookseller: Schnittman defends e-book royalties and rebuts SoA attack | theBookseller.com. From a publisher’s perspective, royalties will get more sophisticated as new formats and digital content proliferates.  Solid royalty software will be an...
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“The chair of the Society of Authors, Tom Holland, has hit out at publishers’ attempt to seize control over electronic rights, calling ebook deals that lock authors in for the duration of copyright “not remotely fair”.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/12/ebooks-publishing-deals-fair
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Rights, Royalties & Retailers: What Works? Wednesday, May 26, 2010 11:00AM – 12:00PM Location: Room 1E03 Read any news surrounding the agency model, iPad, or Amazon, and one can easily conclude why rights standardization is so crucial today. The pie is only so big, and everybody wants a piece of it. Ebooks supplied the...
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Royalty management is a pure cost center for publishers, and a mission-critical one at that. Fortunately, it is possible to substantially reduce the administrative time required to manage royalties through effective use of royalty software, and through efficient processes. One of the time consuming tasks for smaller publishers is managing the sales data coming...
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The BISG Rights Committee is making steady progress towards creating a standard for communicating rights information and transactions. As a bit of background, there are currently no standards for communicating rights and the related royalty bearing sales. This lack of a standard hinders the commerce of these rights. By creating this standard, it will...
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BISAC Presentation – Work So Far The above link points to the presentation used at the September 2009 BISAC meeting to introduce the proposal for a rights and royalties working committee to BISAC.
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A nice, brief take on Michael’s vision for the BRR. Interview with Michael Healy.
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Everyone is wondering where publishing is heading.  The headlines and pundits talk about the end of the book, the end of the bookstore.  There is so much to worry about. Well the time has come to stop worrying and to enjoy the ride.  With the potentially immenent establishment of  the Book Rights Registry (BRR),...
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I would like to express a particular thanks to Mark Bide, Executive Director of EDItEUR, for his patience and wisdom in helping me to better understand ONIX for RRO’s.  I would also like to thank Piero Attanasio, for his guidance in helping me understand ARROW, and their involvement in the creation of ONIX for...
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In part I of this series, we explored the possibility of incorporating ACAP’s work into a standard for the Book Rights Registry transactions.  In this post, we will look at the possibility of incorporating  ARROW. As described by the Arrow website, “Solutions envisaged by include the establishment of systems for the exchange of...
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