Publishing startup Ganxy launches new tool for ebook giveaways
Ganxy, a startup that helps publishers sell and market ebooks online, is adding tools that will let them give away ebooks for free through targeted promotional campaigns. Read more »
Stories for Apr. 15, 2013
Stories for Apr. 14, 2013
How Syfy/Trion’s Defiance created a new Earth and a new approach to transmedia
“Watch the Show, Play the Game, Change the World” is how “Defiance” bills itself, but the combination of video game and television could be a game-changer in its own right. Read more »
Google deal with EU regulates search results – report
photo: google
The details of a long-awaited deal between Google and the EU are finally out. The agreement requires Google to list three competitors in certain types of search listings, and to agree to other, wide-ranging conditions. Read more at GigaOM »
Stories for Apr. 12, 2013
Celebrity social media firm Ad.ly predicts $5M in revenue after embracing analytics
photo: ad.ly
Ad.ly is a social media ad agency that provides brands with celebrity endorsements. To come up with a more steady revenue stream, it’s turned to offering analytics. Read more »
Don’t think of it as a newspaper — think of it as a platform for talent
photo: Flickr / Christian Scholz
Newspapers and other media entities have gotten used to thinking of themselves as the most important part of the equation — but why not focus on helping individual brands engage with their audiences and then share in the revenue? Read more »
ReelSurfer targets media with newest take on video clipping
photo: transp
ReelSurfer set out to build a tool for people who don’t shoot their own videos. Then Reuters started using it. Read more »
Amazon CEO Bezos in shareholder letter: Authors are our customers, too
photo: Getty Images / Spencer Platt
In a letter accompanying Amazon’s 2012 annual report, CEO Jeff Bezos focuses on the things that Amazon does because it wants to, not because it has to. Among them: Paying authors royalties more frequently, and spending “millions of dollars” to add Harry Potter to the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. Read more »
When you’re selling “bite-size entertainment,” what do you charge for the full meal?
photo: Jenny 8. Lee
Publishers and record labels are experimenting with serialized ebooks and EPs, which they sell at a discount to entice customers. But what happens when the full-length version goes on sale? Read more »
Stories for Apr. 11, 2013
MLB plans ad exchanges to target premium baseball fans
photo: Flickr / random letters
Major League Baseball is using new data tools to create more detailed profiles of people who visit team and league websites. MLB plans to use the extra data to create profiles of affluent customers, and to let brands target those profiles on private ad exchanges. Read more »
Two charts that tell you everything you need to know about the future of newspapers
photo: Flickr user Zarko Drincic
The U.S. newspaper industry has lost more than $40 billion in ad revenue in the past decade — over half of that in the last four years alone — and Google’s ad revenues are now more than twice what the industry pulls in. Read more »
Most Google Reader users check it “many” times a day, according to Digg survey
Digg is working on a Google Reader replacement. Its survey of about 8,000 current Google Reader users suggests that many of them are sticking with it until the bitter end; so far, among alternatives, Feedly is in the lead. Read more »
Netflix users watched more than four billion hours of video in Q1
photo: Netflix
Netflix streamed more than four billion hours of movies and TV shows to its members in the first quarter of this year. Read more »
New Google tool lets you share email when you die — but not your books and music
Google has a useful new tool to manage your “digital afterlife.” The feature sends passwords to trusted contacts if you have been inactive, and provides a way to send on many aspects of your digital life — except for any media you bought. Read more at GigaOM »
YouTube just got support for multiple admins per channel
Teamwork just got easier for YouTube creators: The site now allows up to 50 people to administer a YouTube channel together. Read more »
Ebooks made up 23 percent of US publisher sales in 2012, says the AAP
Ebooks accounted for nearly a quarter of the U.S. trade book business in 2012, according to statistics released Thursday by the Association of American Publishers. The ebook industry appears to be maturing, however, and triple-digit growth is likely a thing of the past. Read more »
Stories for Apr. 10, 2013
Google’s Wojcicki: Pepsi prank with Jeff Gordon is future of online ads
Google’s Susan Wojcicki says the viral success of a Pepsi prank video shows how online ad viewing is becoming a voluntary experience where marketers strive to produce content viewers want to watch. Read more »
One downside of paywalls: Where does your growth come from?
photo: Shutterstock / Voronin76
Paywalls can bring in extra revenue for newspapers and other traditional media outlets, and they can help keep existing readers from leaving — but how do they help bring in new readers? And what happens if they don’t? Read more »
BajaLibros, a big Spanish-language ebookstore, comes to the US
BajaLibros, a large Spanish-language digital bookstore headquartered in Argentina, announced its launch in the United States Wednesday. But the company may have trouble breaking through because Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple have all also launched Spanish-language bookstores in the U.S. Read more »
Waterstones founder to help launch new e-singles subscription site, Read Petite
Read Petite, an e-singles subscription site, will launch in the U.K. this fall. Waterstones founder Tim Waterstone is chairman. The site was founded by literary agent Peter Cox and consultant Martyn Daniels. Read more »
Viki doubles down on content arbitrage with Asian TV and movie deals
Viki secured a bunch of new content for its global TV platform, including Japanese TV shows that have never been available in other countries. Read more »
Stories for Apr. 9, 2013
Tumblr abruptly closes down its Storyboard project, lays off entire editorial team
photo: (c) 2012 Pinar Ozger
Although its Storyboard editorial operation won awards for the content it curated from the Tumblr network, founder and CEO David Karp said Tuesday the unit is being shut down and all the editorial staff are being let go. Read more »
Google sold Frommer’s Travel — but kept all the social media data
People wondered why Google sold Frommer’s Travel barely nine months after acquiring it in the first place. The answer is that it’s keeping a huge number social media followers from sites like Facebook. Read more »
This is about more than just advertorial — it’s about brands going direct
There’s been plenty of focus on how publishers are catering to advertisers by producing “native” advertising, including sponsored content — but a much bigger trend is brands and advertisers that are becoming publishers themselves. Read more »
Boxee rebrands new device as Cloud DVR, tones down cord cutting rhetoric
Boxee TV is dead, long live Boxee Cloud DVR: Boxee’s recently-launched consumer electronics device has been rebranded, and the company introduced a free service tier. Read more »
AOL’s new publisher tool to compete with Google, Armstrong says it’s back in “ad tech game”
photo: AP Images
AOL announced Marketplace, an effort to consolidate the stack of tools publishers use to serve ads. AOL is competing with Google in the ad tech field as it tries to diversify its revenues Read more »
The Empire acquires the rebel alliance: Mendeley users revolt against Elsevier takeover
photo: Shutterstock/Luis Santos
Mendeley, an open collaboration platform for scientific research, has promised that it won’t become less open after being acquired by journal publisher Elsevier, but some prominent users aren’t waiting around. Read more »
Branch announces simplified version of commenting and conversation site
Commenting and conversations on Branch have always aimed to make things simple. But the company is announcing some updates on Tuesday that will make it even easier to start discussions. Read more at GigaOM »
Worldreader counts 500,000 users of its e-reading app on feature phones
photo: Worldreader
Nonprofit Worldreader says that its e-reading app, which is aimed at users in the developing world on 2G networks, is now installed on over 5 million feature phones worldwide. The platform counts 500,000 active readers a month. Read more »
B&N rebrands PubIt! as Nook Press, and adds new features to make self-publishing easier
Barnes & Noble has rebranded its self-publishing platform, PubIt!, as Nook Press, and is offering some new features intended to make self-publishing faster and easier. The platform is only available to authors in the U.S. Read more »
Blackstrap will turn your Pocket or Instapaper articles into a $15 print book
A new site called Blackstrap will let you turn the articles you’ve saved on Instapaper, Pocket or Twitter into a $15 printed book. But does anybody actually need this service? Read more »
Why online advertising will get easier for publishers (and why it won’t)
photo: nmedia
The process of selling digital ads is notoriously complicated and involves a lengthy list of competing companies and technologies. A recent ad tech conference explored if things will ever change – here’s some highlights. Read more »
Flurry opens Marketplace, a real-time bidding ad exchange for mobile apps
photo: Flurry
The company hopes Marketplace will stand out because it is offering app publishers and developers a way to sell their ad inventory while also giving them built-in, accurate data about their audience. Read more »
Is it a good thing that Elsevier bought Mendeley?
The rumored takeover is now reality, at a reported price of $69 million. But, given Elsevier’s reputation and Mendeley’s open access ethos, will this deal turn out to be a harmonious success? Read more »
Book review: Former Kindle exec on Kindle flaws, Nook strengths and Google’s future in ebooks
In a new book, former Kindle exec Jason Merkoski examines where e-reading platforms are now and how they could change in the future. If you’re looking for secrets about Jeff Bezos, though, you’re in the wrong place. Read more »
Podcast: Who’s afraid of podcasts as a business? Not Earwolf
Is “podcast” a dirty word for a media business? Earwolf doesn’t think so. We talk with the CEO of the podcast network to learn how he’s making them work. Read more »
Top jobs of the week in digital media
photo: Shutterstock / Tom Mc Nemar
Looking for a job in digital media? Each week we highlight some of the most interesting positions posted to paidContent’s jobs board. Check out the latest gigs at media companies across the country. Read more »
Stories for Apr. 8, 2013
Digital First Media’s John Paton on newspapers and paywalls
Digital First Media chief executive officer John Paton says that paywalls aren’t the answer for newspapers, and that print is eventually going to go away — which is why the company needs to take more risks. Read more »
Why BuzzFeed’s attempt to reinvent online advertising is a lot harder than it looks
BuzzFeed has become the poster child for what some call sponsored content or “native advertising,” but despite the skills of founder Jonah Peretti, the secret to making ads go viral is not quite as simple as it appears to be. Read more »
Study sees takeoff in automated ad buying for video — but will prices hold up?
Programmatic buying for online video ads — which lets brands buy select audiences in real time — is growing rapidly. The spread of this buying technique may coincide with a drop in prices but the two phenomena are not necessarily connected. Read more »
No, Scott Turow, copyright is not killing American authors
photo: Getty Images
In “The Slow Death of the American Author,” Scott Turow decries the state of the country’s copyright system. He gets it wrong and hurts the Authors Guild’s standing among potential allies. Read more »
