The readers’s advisory librarian’s weekly update, from a scan of more than 100 blogs, newsletters, magazines, newspapers and television. This blog is brought to you by the Reader’s Advisor Online, the subscription database based on Libraries Unlimited’s Genreflecting Advisory series. We’d love to hear from you. Feel free to comment on any of our posts, or contact us at rablog@lu.com.
By Cindy Orr
Titles New to the Bestseller Lists This Week
Fiction
Nonfiction
To see the entire list of this week’s hottest books, check the Most Wanted Mashup in the righthand column.
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We have a long list of titles which will be released this week including these, or check our complete New, Noteworthy, and No-Brainer list.
And many more. Scroll down to the next entry to see the whole list, or click here.
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Our Under the Radar list this week is Past and Present Oscar Nominees for Best Adapted Screenplay. Look in the righthand column just under the Most Wanted Mashup for this list.
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And now on to the news of the week:
The big news of the week is the ongoing “negotiations” between Amazon and Macmillan. The saga is a complicated one, and has now extended to HarperCollins and Hachette as well. In a nutshell, when Amazon and Macmillan disagreed on terms of their eBooks agreement, Amazon pulled all the “Buy” buttons off of Macmillan titles…paper and electronic…so that their Kindle customers could not buy them, and bewildered print customers who knew nothing about any controversy, couldn’t figure out why there was no way to buy the book they had chosen.
Authors were the helpless victims of this bullying tactic, doubtless losing royalties on sales that went awry, and the story still continues with huge implications for the future. The argument is between Amazon’s desire to move toward controlling a bigger piece of the supply chain and the publishers’ position that they want to use the agency model. Writer Charles Stross does a great job of explaining the difference.
The announcement of the iPad last week and Apple’s agreement to use the agency model, has added to the pressure on Amazon. Amazon’s one public statement (other than removing the “Buy” buttons) has been to their Kindle users on a forum, “We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books.” Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles seems like saying Reese’s has a monopoly on Peanut Butter Cups…um, okay…monopoly?
By the end of the week the buttons were restored to Macmillan titles, but distrust of Amazon had caused the Authors Guild to design a website for authors which will automatically track whether their buy buttons are working in the future, and email them if not. Here are a few more good links in case you’d like to follow the controversy more closely:
More News:
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Books on Screen
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Awards
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Authors
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Lists
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Lighthearted Links of the Week
