"Will pricing matter?"
ZDNet asked in reporting the launch yesterday of Sony's new line of
touch screen e-readers. "The catch is that Sony's line carries higher price points relative to rivals Amazon and Barnes & Noble." The Pocket's SRP is $179, the Touch is $229 and the Daily Edition--the only one with wi-fi and 3G connectivity--is $299.
Steve Haber, president of Sony's digital reading unit, contends that cut-throat pricing has been overrated as a sales incentive,
Forbes reported. "Our original thinking was that we needed to hit a lower price point," said Haber. "But folks kept stepping up to purchase our higher end products. Price is not the main component of this business. It's the user experience."
Forbes observed, however, that Sony "faces major challenges in the e-reader market. Perhaps in a bid to gain more international market share and avoid complex dealmaking with wireless carriers, the company no longer offers wireless connectivity in either the Touch Edition or Pocket Edition, a definite black mark against those devices when compared to the Kindle or Barnes & Noble's Nook."
---
In a related development, the
Motley Fool's analysis of the e-reader market and Amazon's Kindle deal with Staples (
Shelf Awareness, September 1, 2010) has led to a change of heart regarding prior skepticism about Amazon's "initial foray into bricks-and-mortar distribution" with Target.
Citing this summer's e-reader price wars, which escalated again this week when Borders cut prices on two e-reading devices, the
Motley Fool noted Amazon "won't necessarily have to respond directly to the latest round of price cuts," and suggested the Borders move was "probably a bigger affront" to B&N's Nook and Sony's e-book readers. "They're all trying to position themselves as the viable Kindle alternative--and that skirmish will most likely come down to price. Just three years ago, Amazon hit the market with a $399 Kindle. They grow up--and get marked down--so fast these days."
---
He
reads, she reads. While acknowledging that the e-book vs. print book
debate "is wreaking havoc inside the publishing industry," the
New York Times observed that "inside homes, the plot takes a personal twist as couples find themselves torn over the 'right way' to read."
For
example, editor Alexandra Ringe and her husband, writer Jim Hanas,
"fell in love over books, with one of their early dates at a used-book
festival in Manhattan. They married in a SoHo bookstore and live in an
apartment in the Park Slope neighborhood with floor-to-ceiling
bookshelves. She collects vintage yearbooks and self-help books. But he
likes to read on his iPhone."
The battle lines are being drawn
with remarkable speed. Market research company Forrester predicts that
by the end of 2010, 10.3 million people are expected to own e-readers in
the U.S., buying about 100 million e-books. This is up from 3.7 million
e-readers and 30 million e-books sold last year, the
Times wrote.
---
At the latest Apple summit yesterday, CEO Steve Jobs took time out from the hoopla surrounding new product launches to share some updated iTunes sales numbers, noting that customers have downloaded 35 million books, 11.7 billion songs, more than 4.3 million TV episodes and 100 million movies.
---
Jeremiah's Vanishing New York reported that Jonathan Franzen frenzy didn't strike at Manhattan's
St. Mark's Bookshop, which offered extended hours for the midnight release
Freedom. When the books were finally unveiled, "there was a barely discernible ripple of acknowledgment from the patrons. [The bookseller] placed a handful of copies on the New Fiction shelf, mixed in among the other authors whose names begin with F."
---
Tonight,
A Novel Adventure bookstore, Boise, Idaho, will host its final First Thursday celebration. The following notice was posted on the bookshop's website: "It is with great sadness that we will be closing our storefront location after September 2, 2010. We are moving all of our selling efforts online. We have loved being in and around--and in some small way an important part of--the downtown community of Boise for so many years."
---
A book busking fundraiser held recently at Australian indie
Pages & Pages Booksellers to benefit the Indigenous Literacy Project (
Shelf Awareness, August 10, 2010) raised more than a thousand dollars. The
Green Eggs & Ham duo
in this video garnered the most donations.
---
Author Neal Stephenson is co-founder and chairman of
Subutai Corp., a new digital publishing company that "has developed what it calls the PULP platform for creating digital novels. The core of the experience is still a text novel, but authors can add additional material like background articles, images, music, and video. There are also social features that allow readers to create their own profiles, earn badges for activity on the site or in the application, and interact with other readers," the
New York Times reported.
"I can remember reading
Dune
for the first time, and I started by reading the glossary," he said. "Any book that had that kind of extra stuff in it was always hugely fascinating to me."
Subutai's launch publication will be a serialized story,
The Mongoliad, featuring a new chapter each week. It will cost $5.99 for a six-month subscription or $9.99 for the year. Stephenson is writing the book with a team--led by Mark Teppo--that includes novelist Greg Bear.
---
Scholastic is "taking a new approach to getting its books into classrooms" this year, the
New York Times reported, noting that the publisher "plans to reach teachers using a combination of social networking, expanded e-commerce and new back-to-school promotions, in addition to the standard paper catalogues."
"There’s just a tremendous amount of volatility and movement,” said Judy A. Newman, president of Scholastic Book Clubs. The times cited numbers from the National Center for Education Statistics indicating that "of the 3,867,600 public and private school teachers in the United States in the 2008-9 school year, about 7%, or 279,700, moved to a different school and about 9%, or 347,100, left the profession."
"The 2009 school year was particularly difficult because of the economic climate," Newman said. "There was a tremendous amount of dislocation and uncertainty."
---
"Not since Vietnam have so many books and movies been produced about an American War," the
Daily Beast wrote to introduce its list of the "Best Movies and Books on Iraq."
---
"After all, if I don't help myself, who will?" On
NPR.org, Lisa Unger recommended three books for the self-help skeptic:
The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz,
Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui by Karen Kingston and
Positive Energy: 10 Extraordinary Prescriptions for Transforming Fatigue, Stress and Fear into Vibrance, Strength and Love by Judith Orloff.
---
Charting the night sky... for aliens. Mark Pilkington, author
Mirage Men: A Journey into Disinformation, Paranoia and UFOs--The Weird Truth Behind UFOs, chose his top 10 books about UFOs for the
Guardian.
"The UFO arena acts as a kind of vivarium for a range of psychological, sociological and anthropological experiences, beliefs, conditions and behaviors," Pilkington wrote. "They remind us that the Unknown and the Other are still very much at large in our modern world, and provide us with a fascinating glimpse of folklore in action. A tiny few UFO reports also still present us with genuine mysteries."
---
Book trailer of the day:
The Pittsburgh Cocaine Seven: How a Ragtag Group of Fans Took the Fall for Major League Baseball by Aaron Skirboll (Chicago Review Press).
"What
is the dream of book lovers everywhere? To visit the perfect book store, one
that stocks only the best of books, where 'best' is defined by the guarantee of
a transformative experience via the magical linking of words into sentences
into paragraphs into chapters into BOOKS. A place where tables display not the
latest products of publishers and marketers but instead the trustworthy choices
of other book lovers. A place with couches to sit on, a place with long opening
hours and a welcoming staff, a place where customers spend as much time as they
want browsing or reading. A place where only good books are sold and no bad
choices can be made.... The function of a bookstore is to match lover and loved
to ensure the perfect date. The purpose of the bookseller is to provide what we
addicts need, and a good bookseller recommends the best stuff to satisfy our
love for books."
BINC.1118.T2.2024YEARENDCAMPAIGN.jpg)
"While
we continue to succeed in strengthening our financial structure, we are
highly focused on driving profitable sales and increasing market
share," Borders CEO Mike Edwards said in a statement. "Based on
extensive consumer research, we are doing a number of things to excite
our customers going into the critical holiday shopping season, including
launching our new Borders Rewards program, which includes the new paid
Borders Rewards Plus. Recognizing that online and digital will be a
significant part of our business moving forward, we are focused on
increasing our share of the eBook market by growing our digital
offerings to position Borders as the preferred destination for digital
reading. Yet as we grow our online and digital business, we cannot
underestimate the importance of our brick and mortar presence. This will
be top of mind as we work on improving the in-store experience by
shifting our product mix to include additional non-book products that
are both compelling and relevant, and providing an escape for our
customers though an inspirational in-store environment and consistent
customer service."
On Tuesday, several independent Alaskan booksellers, including 
It may have been inevitable--given that 20th Century Fox TV is producing--but now it is official. 
The Way of Kings takes some time to find its bearings: after a brief, enigmatic prelude in which a pair of centuries-old warriors on a desolate battlefield discuss the abandoning of "the Oathpact," the narrative skips ahead 4,500 years to the assassination of a king in his palace, then another five years to a war fought in that king's memory, then another eight months, as a soldier who distinguished himself in that battle is being transported as a slave.