The Digital Reader |
- The Morning Coffee – 25 March 2014
- Cloud Storage Firm Box Files for IPO
- Got an Unpublished College Thesis? This Vanity Press Will Help You Get it into Print
- Nokia, Microsoft now Expect Their $7.2 Billion Deal to Close in April
- Zola Books Partners with NY Public Library, Will Supply New Book Recommendation Engine
- Indie eBook Retailer Diesel eBooks Files Antitrust Lawsuit Over Agency Pricing
- Dual-Screen Smartphone Maker Yota Devices Adds Investor
- New Tax Laws Could Increase UK eBook Prices by as Much as 20%
| The Morning Coffee – 25 March 2014 Posted: 24 Mar 2014 09:30 PM PDT Top stories this Tuesday morning include DBW noticing that Apple has supplanted B&N as the second largest US ebook retailer (link) – a conclusion which I reached 2 months ago, a look at floppy book sequels (link), a silly copyright infringement claim (link),, and more
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| Cloud Storage Firm Box Files for IPO Posted: 24 Mar 2014 05:08 PM PDT Box, Box is not a name that you’d read often on this blog, and that is generally because the company has been focused on signing businesses and not consumers. Just about the only times the name has come across my radar is when the Box app was bundled on to budget tablets. The app came with a promise of 5GB of free cloud storage. This service provider boasts 25 million registered users and 34,000 paying corporate customers. Its 513 employees had generated revenues $124.2 million for the year ending January 31, 2013. That’s more than double the revenues from the previous year, but I wouldn’t celebrate just yet. Losses also widened from $112.6 million to $168.6 million over the same period as Box poured more money into growth. Box is seeking to raise a far smaller sum than its larger and more successful rival, Dropbox. That firm recently raised $350 million from private investors and boasts 200 million (mostly non-paying) users. Around a quarter of Box is owned by the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. The second largest investor, US Venture Partners, own 13% of the company.Other investors include General Atlantic (8.4%), Scale Venture Partners (7.4%), Bessemer Venture Partners (5.6%), Meritech Capital Partners (5.1%), and co-founder and CEO Aaron Levie owns 4.1%. The post Cloud Storage Firm Box Files for IPO appeared first on The Digital Reader.  |
| Got an Unpublished College Thesis? This Vanity Press Will Help You Get it into Print Posted: 24 Mar 2014 02:04 PM PDT Self-published Joseph Stromberg, writing over at Slate, recently chronicled his experiences with LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, a vanity press bent on publishing all of the theses and academic papers it can. While LAP Lambert doesn’t take the usual route of trying to sell authors unnecessary services, it is eager to publish any paper, no matter the lack of quality, proofreading, or length, and it does still pressure its victims to buy POD copies of the papers they already own. Oh, and they grab exclusive rights to the paper, too:
The terms are actually only slightly worse than what is demanded by most publishers of academic journals (I’m looking at you Elsevier and Springer). Sure, there aren’t any reports of authors seeing a dime from the sale of their paper, but that is again no worse than publishers of academic journals. So if LAP Lambert had stopped here they would at best count as a nuisance. But if LAP Lambert had stopped at simply spamming online bookstores everywhere with unproofed, poorly produced POD books then they would not be a vanity press. They appear to make most of their revenue from selling to authors:
LAP Lambert uses a number of hard sale tactics to try to pressure authors into buying copies of their own papers, including guilt, optimism, and hostility:
Stromberg reports that his book made it through LAP Lambert with no sign that it had even been looked at by a person. The book has a generic cover, and it is lying in wait for unsuspecting readers at a number of bookstores, including Amazon, B&N, and elsewhere. LAP Lambert is merely one small cog in a book mill. It’s part of an enormous German publishing conglomerate called VDM which boasts 78 imprints and 27 subsidiary houses. It publishes content in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, and Russian. The parent company of LAP Lambert likes to boast that they publish 50,000 titles per month, making them the publishing industry’s equivalent of a content farm. You’ve probably encountered their work. In addition to spamming bookstores with unedited academic papers, VDM is also notorious for churning out books based entirely on copied Wikipedia articles. You can find any number of examples of VDM's efforts at their online bookstore, Morebooks.de. The post Got an Unpublished College Thesis? This Vanity Press Will Help You Get it into Print appeared first on The Digital Reader.  |
| Nokia, Microsoft now Expect Their $7.2 Billion Deal to Close in April Posted: 24 Mar 2014 12:17 PM PDT Microsoft's Microsoft is spending $7.2 billion to buy Nokia’s struggling hardware and services business, a move which is expected to boost their hardware divisions as well as give Microsoft control over the primary maker of Windows Phones. The deal was supposed to have closed this quarter but it is still wending its way through the various regulatory bodies. According to Nokia, “the transaction is pending approvals from certain antitrust authorities in Asia which are still conducting their reviews”. Microsoft says that the deal has been approved by regulatory authorities in 15 markets on five continents so far. The deal is still awaiting approval in China, and it is expected to run into problems in India.  Nokia smartphones running Windows Phone Both Google and Samsung have asked Chinese authorities to consider how the deal could impact patent licensing fees, and in India the deal might get caught up in an existing tax dispute. Nokia owns factories in India, some of which will be transferred to Microsoft, and one Indian state has filed suit over unpaid taxes on smartphones produced there. But it does not appear that Nokia is too concerned. According to the Nokia statement, the "ongoing tax proceedings in India have no bearing on the timing of the closing or the material deal terms of the anticipated transaction between Nokia and Microsoft." Nokia is the leading maker of Windows Phones, and they have also partnered with Microsoft to produce several tablets. But even though the 2 companies have close ties, Nokia has continued to develop devices running other OSes, including a recently announced line of budget smartphones which run a customized version of Android. The post Nokia, Microsoft now Expect Their $7.2 Billion Deal to Close in April appeared first on The Digital Reader.  |
| Zola Books Partners with NY Public Library, Will Supply New Book Recommendation Engine Posted: 24 Mar 2014 09:22 AM PDT When The New York Public Library has announced a new partnership with Zola Books today. The library is adding a new book recommendation system to its online catalog, and that new system is going to be powered by Bookish. This site, which was announced in 2011 but launched in 2013, was originally developed by a consortium of 3 major US publishers (Simon & Schuster,Hachette, and Penguin) as a marketing tool. The site was intended to promote books, and it was chiefly know for its recommendation engine. Bookish uses an algorithm that identifies recommended books based on similar characteristics. Unlike the NYPL’s current recommendation system, which based its suggestions on the books that other readers were checking out, Bookish recommends books based on dozens of attributes, including a books’ metadata, the awards it may have one, and so on. So how well does it work? That I don’t know for sure, but obviously it works well enough for the NYPL to offer a contract to Zola Books. “Discovering great books on library shelves when I was a kid made me the huge reader I am today. To be able to partner with one of the best libraries in the world to offer the serendipity of book discovery online through Bookish Recommends is a tremendous thrill”, said Joe Regal, CEO of Zola Books. The new recommendation system is expected to be integrated into the NYPL catalog in the next few weeks. That catalog is supported by BiblioCommons, an independent tech firm that has contracts to support the catalogs of close to 70 public libraries, including ones in the US, Canada, and elsewhere. The post Zola Books Partners with NY Public Library, Will Supply New Book Recommendation Engine appeared first on The Digital Reader.  |
| Indie eBook Retailer Diesel eBooks Files Antitrust Lawsuit Over Agency Pricing Posted: 24 Mar 2014 08:22 AM PDT Here’s a Diesel eBooks, one of the lesser known (but still thriving) ebook retailers in the US, filed an antitrust lawsuit earlier this month. This retailer is alleging that it was harmed when 5 publishers conspired to bring about agency pricing. HarperCollins, Hachette, Macmillan, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster are all named in the suit, with Apple as the lead defendant. I was wondering when this would happen. Ever since the 5 publishers settled the antitrust lawsuit brought against them by the DOJ in 2012 I had been waiting for ebook retailers to file a similar lawsuit. The DOJ settlement only dealt with restitution for consumers that were forced to pay a higher price for ebooks, but they weren’t the only affected party. Agency Pricing enabled publishers to control the retail prices of the ebooks they published, and that control restricted ebookstores from competing by selling the ebooks at a cheaper price. In short, Diesel eBooks is arguing that Agency artificially restrained the ability of Diesel eBooks to compete in the market. Would anyone care to make a bet as to how long it will take before the publishers settle? Given that they have already tacitly admitted to the conspiracy when they settled with the DOJ, any defense they might mount in this case will be weak. I would like to say that they have no defense, but that doesn’t mean they cannot stall the case with motions, appeals, and other tricks. They might even be able to win on a technicality. Apple, on the other hand, is probably going to fight this case as vigorously as they are continuing to appeal the antitrust lawsuit brought by the DOJ. Apple may have lost that case, but they are continuing to fight it on appeal. And they might win, too. The post Indie eBook Retailer Diesel eBooks Files Antitrust Lawsuit Over Agency Pricing appeared first on The Digital Reader.  |
| Dual-Screen Smartphone Maker Yota Devices Adds Investor Posted: 24 Mar 2014 07:42 AM PDT Yota Rostec is primarily known as a defense corporation, but the company also invests in civilian tech like the Yotaphone. They took control of a 25% stake in Yota Devices in late December 2013 by exercising one of their existing options. Rostec had owned an interest in another larger mobile-technology firm which used to own Yota Devices before it was spun off in 2011. According to a Yota Devices spokesperson, no money changed hands as part of the deal. The spokesperson went on to add that the firm doesn’t expect that the new ownership stake will affect its operations, though given the ongoing international crisis in the Ukraine I am not so sure I would agree with that point. Yota Devices is best know for making the dual-screen Yotaphone, a novel smartphone that combines 2 screens, one LCD and the other E-ink, on a svelte slab style smartphone. The first Yotaphone, which shipped in December 2013, is available in Russia, Germany, France, Austria, and Spain, and it will go on sale in the UK this week. That model sports a 4.3″ LCD screen and a 4.3″ E-ink screen, and retails for 499 euros. The second-gen Yotaphone, which was unveiled last month, has a 5″ AMOLED screen and a 4.7″ E-ink screen. This model is expected to ship in Europe and Asia in Fall 2014.
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| New Tax Laws Could Increase UK eBook Prices by as Much as 20% Posted: 24 Mar 2014 06:14 AM PDT Starting The Guardian is reporting that the next budget for the UK includes a rather nasty clause that closes the Luxembourg tax loophole enjoyed by Apple, Google, Amazon, and other online sellers:
This should really come as no surprise. Remember, the European Commission announced in September that the EU tax laws on digital content would be changing by 2015. Today’s story merely reflects the UK complying with the new EU regulations. Under the new rules, retailers are going to be required to collect VAT based on the location of the customer. The change will affect all retailers, but it’s only going to be a nuisance for online stores. The old rule required retailers to collect based on their location. This encouraged some retailers to shift their digital operations to an EU member country which offered a lower VAT, thus enabling that retailer to have a slight competitive advantage. For example, Apple, Google, et al had been enjoying a Luxembourg tax loophole since that Duchy illegally lowered their VAT on digital content in December 2011. They dropped it to 3% from 15%, their regular VAT rate. So how much will the ebook prices really increase? At this point no one knows for sure, but the official estimates are suggesting that this move could add £300 million in tax revenues as retailers jack up prices. But to be honest, I’m not sure Amazon is going to increase their prices. They do charge authors and publishers a delivery fee which is deducted from the 70% payment option, and that might be enough to balance out most of the extra taxes they will be required to collect. Sure, this might sting Amazon’s pocketbook, but it would also give them an advantage that will hurt their competitors even more. image by me and the sysop
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