(NEWS) In a July 4th article published in the New York Times, former IBPA Board Chair, Stephen Mettee, says, “Amazon simply following in the tradition of any large company that gains control of a market.” By David Streitfeld, New York Times Jim Hollock’s first book, a true-crime tale set in Pennsylvania, got strong reviews …

There’s been quite a ruckus in the book publishing world lately. Amazon.com has recently announced its long-anticipated foray into lending e-books.

One grand thing about e-books is, since there is no printing involved, once edited, designed, typeset, and formatted, the cost of an e-book is zero. Another is that the retail price a publisher sets can vary day to day.

But, with these two advantages, what does a publisher need to be concerned about when pricing an e-book? Vook, the innovative company that melds books with video, has issued a splendid white paper that goes a long way toward answering this question.

At Quill Driver Books we put a lot of thought into the pricing of each title we published.
Here is an abbreviated list of things we considered:

by Stephen Blake Mettee, Board Chair, IBPA I don’t subscribe to Vanity Fair, but, like with the New Yorker (To which I also don’t subscribe; I quit my subscription as a minor vice on which I both spent too much time and felt guilty for not spending more—the darn thing comes weekly!), whenever I crack …

According to a recent USA Today article, retailers such as Best Buy, Target, Barnes & Noble, and Wal-Mart are cutting back on their CD selections. A Best Buy spokesperson is quoted as saying, “As people buy less, we stock less.” Sounds like a self-fulfilling cycle to this observer, but, sadly, one that isn’t likely to be reversed.

Federal Judge Denny Chin, after 13 months of pondering, rejected the proposed amended settlement agreement in the Google Books class action lawsuit.

As a choice of material, short stories vie with poetry as the quickest way to drain a publisher’s bank account.
Yet, a year-old publisher of short stories, Electric Literature, may have found the magic formula.
The company’s mission “is to use new media and innovative distribution to return the short story to a place of prominence in popular culture.”

For those of you who aren’t able to attend but want to keep up with the latest in the ever-changing world of publishing, following are some resources to bring you up-to-speed on what’s happening at the O’Reilly Tools of Change Conference, going on now in New York: Follow IBPA Board Member Steve Mettee’s blog for …