Textbooks Publishers Using "Packets" To Fight Used Book Market

Textbooks Publishers Using "Packets" To Fight Used Book Market

Students who prefer to shop for textbooks online are encountering a hitch in their efforts. University and College courses are increasingly using bundled versions of textbooks that come with their own ISBN number. School book stores sell the packets as a single item, because their contents don’t come itemized.

Academic Publisher Pays Professors For Shill Amazon Reviews

Academic Publisher Pays Professors For Shill Amazon Reviews

This story is a little old, but was just brought to our attention this weekend. Elsevier, which is sort of the Death Star of academic publishing, was caught offering $25 Amazon gift cards to professors who gave the book five-star reviews on Amazon.

Amazon Begins Selling Kindle Books With Text To Speech Disabled

Amazon Begins Selling Kindle Books With Text To Speech Disabled

As promised, Amazon has begun to implement the text to speech (TTS) flag that lets authors and their publishers turn off the “read it to me” feature of books on the Kindle. MobileRead members note that Toni Morrison’s A Mercy and Stephen King’s The Stand both have TTS disabled, and it seems to be on an author-by-author basis instead of by publisher or imprint.

Romance Novels Selling Like Hotcakes Because We're All Poor

Romance Novels Selling Like Hotcakes Because We're All Poor

Harlequin, the been-around-forever romance novel company, reported a 32% increase its 4th quarter from a year ago, says ABC News. In this video clip, they look at the company’s single minded focus on churning out 1200 new titles per year at $5 each, in pretty much every sub-genre you can invent. The best parts of the segment, however, are watching various celebrities—especially Martin Bashir, George Will, Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd—read samples. Their interpretations will make you feel “the purely caveman urge to pick her up and carry her to bed.”

Nearly 30% Of Books Sold For The Kindle Are Now Above $9.99

Nearly 30% Of Books Sold For The Kindle Are Now Above $9.99

It’s been a little over a year since Amazon released the Kindle, and now publishers are finally getting the chance to set their own pricing on ebook editions. The result has been a slow creep in pricing on some titles—in some cases to levels above the price of a paper edition of the same book—for a digital edition that you can’t resell, give away to someone else, or read on any other device. Kindle owners have started to notice, and now some of them are complaining that Amazon overpromised the $9.99 bookstore concept to move Kindles.

Conde Nast Will Never Stop Emailing You. Never. Stop Asking.

Conde Nast Will Never Stop Emailing You. Never. Stop Asking.

Condé Nast marketing department, are you on crack? Have you put some trinket from “The Hills” in charge of your mail server? Justin has emailed you repeatedly to tell you to stop spamming him. His marketing preferences on your site show a vast field of “No” for every single title on your list. And yet he’s received 16 emails since his last request—almost three a month. You should know better—or, as Justin puts it, “This isn’t some Nigerian guy trying to make my penis larger or send me money, this is a company here, in the United States, that I know should be held accountable.”

The Fakery Behind Amazon's "Top 10 Reviewers"

The Fakery Behind Amazon's "Top 10 Reviewers"

Amazon reviews, especially the effusive ones, have always been suspect—you never know when a five-star review came from an employee, publicist, or marketing type. Slate describes the dishonest world of Amazon’s “Top 10 Reviewers,” where a small group of writers churn out purple-prosed blurbs and jacket-ready compliments at an astounding rate, sometimes for a fee. In turn, these reviewers are inundated with a sort of fame as well as free merchandise—mostly books in the past, but now electronics and other goods. Because good reviews sell more books, Amazon has no incentive to weed out the reviewers who have turned the system into a cottage industry. We suggest you disregard any review with a “Top 10 Reviewer” label on it.

http://consumerist.com/2008/01/17/the-astrologer-magazine-shuttered/

“The Astrologer” magazine shuttered in December 2007 due to “unforeseen circumstances.” Hmm. [Neatorama]

New Downloadable Movie Book Tests Yahoo/Adobe Ad System

New Downloadable Movie Book Tests Yahoo/Adobe Ad System

Remember the announcement in November that Yahoo and Adobe were testing out a new ad system inside pdf documents? (No? It only got 1,200 hits.) Well, they are, and the big question then was how Yahoo and Adobe would determine what sorts of ads were placed in the documents, and how they’d appear. Now there’s a free (or rather, ad-supported) downloadable book—“200 documentaries you must see before you die”—that lets you test the new ad system out for yourself.

Harvard Bookstore: "We Own ISBN Numbers"

Harvard Bookstore: "We Own ISBN Numbers"

The Harvard Crimson ran a story last week about a student who was asked to leave the premises for writing down the prices of six textbooks at the Coop, Harvard’s bookstore of record. The bookstore’s president says that there’s no official policy against students writing down information, but “we discourage people who are taking down a lot of notes.” But what’s more surprising, he tells the Crimson that the textbooks’ ISBNs—which can be used to look up the same books online—are “the Coop’s intellectual property.”

The Revised Cover Of OJ Simpson's Memoir Is Not Subtle

The Revised Cover Of OJ Simpson's Memoir Is Not Subtle

All this talk about OJ Simpson being arrested and charged with a felony reminded us that his memoir went on sale Sep. 13. After the book and tv special were canceled following unprecedented consumer backlash, the rights to the manuscript were transferred to the Goldman family by a Florida bankruptcy court.
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