Andrew Sullivan announced yesterday that he is taking his popular politics blog The Dish independent and charging $19.99 a year under a metered model. Since then, the blog has raised $333,000 from about 12,000 readers. Read More »
Bio:Laura covers book publishing, paywalls and magazines for GigaOM, and has a particular interest in e-book pricing and e-singles. She was previously the editor of Publishing Trends, a website and newsletter for the book publishing industry, and served as a staff writer for paidContent. Laura writes from the GigaOM East office in Manhattan.
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E-books
Book publishing
Media
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As it had warned investors last week, Barnes & Noble announced disappointing holiday sales Thursday. Nook device sales, in-store sales and BN.com sales all fell, with a particularly large decline in Nook device sales. Read More »
BuzzFeed announced Thursday morning that it raised $19.3 million in a fourth funding round. The round was led by VC firm NEA, with participation from Hearst, Lerer Ventures, RRE, SoftBank and Buddy Media cofounders Michael and Kass Lazerow. In total, BuzzFeed has raised around $46 million. Read More »
Andrew Sullivan announced Wednesday that his immensely popular politics-and-other-stuff blog, The Dish, is striking out on its own and leaving the Daily Beast, which has owned it since 2011. The new site will charge $19.99 per year. Read More »
Hearst Magazines president David Carey says the company has nearly 800,000 monthly digital subscribers in the U.S. across platforms, and over 80 percent of the digital subscribers “are new to our files.” Read More »
Apple will launch a fully fledged iBookstore in Japan this year. Kobo, Kindle and Google all launched Japanese ebookstores in 2012 — greasing the wheels for Apple’s launch in a country that has been slow to embrace ebooks. Read More »
The Tribune Co. officially emerged from bankruptcy Monday with a new board including former Yahoo exec Ross Levinsohn and former Disney exec Peter Murphy. The company plans to sell off its 23 television stations, eight daily newspapers and stakes in websites like CareerBuilder.com. Read More »
More Must Reads
A piece in the New York Times says ebook prices aren’t falling rapidly because the growth rate of ebooks isn’t as rapid as it once was and e-readers are falling in price. But that explanation doesn’t tell the whole story. Read More »
E-singles — stories somewhere between 5,000 and 30,000 words, usually nonfiction, and sold as inexpensive ebooks — are the format for our time. Here’s why. Read More »
RCS Libri, the second largest book publisher in Italy, has partnered with Italian train company NTV to make ebooks available for free to passengers. The ebooks can be read through devices installed on the trains, or on personal laptops, tablets and smartphones. Read More »
Amazon is bringing Kindle Singles — “compelling ideas expressed at their natural length” — to the United Kingdom. The U.K. store will include new e-singles from popular British authors, as well as many from U.S. authors. Read More »
Amazon Studios, Amazon’s film production division, will produce pilots for six original comedy series, the company announced Thursday — including shows from the Onion and “Doonesbury” writer Garry Trudeau. Read More »
In a holiday promotion, customers who go to a Barnes & Noble store and buy an ebook from a list of 20 qualifying ebooks can “instant-gift” another ebook on that list for free. The list includes new and bestselling titles from big-six publishers who settled in … Read More »
Macmillan CEO John Sargent said Wednesday that the publisher does not plan to follow Penguin’s lead and settle with the Department of Justice in the ebooks lawsuit. However, Macmillan voluntarily entered new retailer contracts that conform with many of the requirements in the original settlement. Read More »
For every high point of 2012, there were also a few forehead-slapping moments. From Apple Maps to HP’s Autonomy to the Facebook IPO, here’s the best of the worst. Read More »
Publishing industry newsletter Publishers Lunch has opened an online bookstore in partnership with Random House. Bookateria’s goal is to aid discovery of new titles and “merchandise the daily book publishing news.” It includes over 2 million titles with affiliate links to bookstores. Read More »
Penguin, which is merging with Random House, has settled with the Department of Justice in the ebook pricing lawsuit, which alleges that Apple and publishers conspired to set ebook prices. Penguin had planned to fight the case in court, but the pending merger has changed that. Read More »
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