Book.biz

After trials, tribulations, false starts, wearing of sack cloth and much gnashing of teeth (and the blood of one dead chicken) I have successfully moved my weblog. For the past week I have been posting only at the new location. It works as expected. All is well.

New Home page.
New primary RSS.

Most of the archives will remain here in order to preserve as many links as possible, but I ran out of disk space and had to delete some of the early ones to keep the site under 40MB. All the archives are at the new site. Eventually I will come back here and put in re-direct meta-tags for both web browsers and RSS aggregators to automagically load the new location. In the meantime, if you have subscribed to a particular Category -- i.e. Patento.absurdium -- you can re-link to it via the Category links on the left.

Many thanks to:

Mark Pilgrim for design guidance and CSS creation
Erin Clerico at Weblogger.com for site hosting and comments configuration
Brent Ashley and Matt Mower for technical assistance
the entire Userland discussion group for moral support.

(drum roll please)

Now, on with the show.......................

Tuesday, November 26, 2002

Amazon Gains Bertelsmann as Services Customer

5:44:21 PM

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Amazon continues to sell their e-commerce expertise to the BigBoyz in the media biz. Sooner or later Amazon will be profitable, but I'm betting it won't be from sales of retail products. As I noted back in September, expect more of this as the reality continues to emerge than making a living selling products requires very different skills from running large-scale e-comm services.

Bertelsmann aligns with Amazon.
BERTELSMANN HAS TAPPED online retailer Amazon.com to help run Bertelsmann's music retailing Web site, CDnow, company representatives said on Tuesday.
The Gütersloh, Germany, media company has contracted Seattle-based Amazon.com to provide services to CDnow, according to spokespeople from both companies. Bertelsmann's BeMusic division oversees the CDnow music site and Bertelsmann's BMG Music Service record club.[...] [InfoWorld: Top News]

Sunday, November 10, 2002

Bertelsmann to Close Internet Retailer

11:25:18 PM

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Internet book retailing is not quite the same story as book publishing. It seems that while the Internet ostensibly has unlimited shelf space, the amount of actual space available for internet book retailers is limited -- and Bertelsmann is dropping out of the race.

Bertelsmann to close German Internet book retailer. CW360.com Oct 23 2002 5:41AM ET
German media giant Bertelsmann will fold its Internet book club BOL at the end of the year after failing to find a potential buyer, company spokesman Gerd Koslowski said yesterday.
BOL had once hoped to compete with Amazon.com, the leading online retailer for media products in the US and Europe. But while Amazon has gone on to post annual sales of more than €3bn (£1.9bn) and profits, BOL has struggled to top revenue of more than €100m. [...] [Moreover - Book publishing news]

Book Biz is Still Good

11:15:01 PM

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Despite the generally torpid economy here and in Europe, the book publishing business is good if you know what you're doing.

'Fabulous' numbers at HarperCollins. Publishing News Nov 9 2002 4:34PM ET
AS NEWS CORPORATION reported its first quarter results this week, Victoria Barnsley, UK CEO of HarperCollins told PN that UK book publishing profits were up by 39% driven by a sales increase of 9%. [...] [Moreover - Book publishing news]

Thursday, September 05, 2002

Internet-based Publisher Offers Professional-Grade Binding

10:41:47 AM

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Premium-grade case binding makes a nice addition for customers of this self-publishing company.

iUniverse Announces Hardcover Books Printed On-Demand
iUniverse, Inc. announced today the addition of hardcover books to its author publishing programs. The professional-grade books include a durable cloth binding, embossed spine, and a full-color dust jacket. The hardcover books fill a particular need for providing signed author copies, keepsakes, or holiday gifts. Authors who publish with iUniverse during the month of September will receive a free hardcover edition which will be ready in time for the holidays. [ Source: iUniverse]

Tuesday, September 03, 2002

e-Books Ready in 15 Minutes

9:25:08 PM

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Who Spilled Merlot on the E-Book?. Electronic wine lists help diners at Aureole restaurants in Vegas and New York match their meals with the perfect vintage. Also: E-publish in minutes.... E-books en español.... and more in M.J. Rose's notebook.
[...] Almost instant e-books: In just 15 minutes, publishers can convert a text file to all seven major e-book formats. Working with existing source files, Seattle Book Company's Express ePublishing System streamlines the conversion process by eliminating repetitive data entry and proofing, as well as tasks related to distribution, marketing and sales.
That's good news to e-book publishers, who in the course of producing a new title typically handle the same data more than 10 times using a variety of production applications and website distribution forms, according to Electronic Book Web editor Glenn Sanders. Express ePublishing reduces the number of applications to one and eliminates redundant steps.
"The publisher is in complete control of the files," said Ted Treanor, president of Seattle Book Company. "We simply removed the technology hurdles inherent in electronic publishing."
As a result, Treanor said, it's much less expensive and time-consuming to publish an e-book. He estimated that publishers could recoup their up-front investment by selling fewer than 100 copies of an e-book. [...] [ Source: Wired News]