The app, ChapterShare, lets Hachette publishing divisions, authors and retail partners post free chapters of books on their Facebook pages. Readers can preorder the books directly from the page and share links to sample chapters with their Facebook friends.

“Publishers need to become application developers in order to connect writers and readers more closely,” Hachette COO Ken Michaels said.

The first two authors to use the app are Michael Connelly, with a chapter from “The Black Box,” and James Patterson, with a chapter from “NYPD Red.”

This weekly feature tells the backstory of how one e-book became a bestseller, and highlights bestselling titles that are selling more copies in digital than in print.

This week’s featured title

The book: “Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong” by Edward Conard (Penguin/Portfolio, list price $14.99). “Unintended Consequences” is #24 on the New York Times nonfiction e-book bestseller list this week.

What it’s about: A former Bain exec explains how to grow the economy.

How it became a bestseller: “Unintended Consequences” was supposed to go on sale on June 28, but the New York Times Magazine decided to do a feature story on it in the May 6 money issue. Penguin was able to move up the e-book’s publication date to May 7, but the print book won’t be released until June 7.

“Unintended Consequences” on … Amazon | Apple | Barnes & Noble | Google | Kobo

New York Times bestseller list, week of 5/27/12

Here are the titles in the top-35 that appear on the e-book bestseller list, but not on the print bestseller list (click the link to expand the chart).

USA Today bestseller list, week of 5/10/12

USA Today includes all formats and genres in one list and notes which format of a book sold best. Here are the titles in the top-35 where e-books outsold print (click the link to expand the chart).

This week’s featured title

The book: “A Brewing Storm” by Richard Castle (Hyperion, list price $2.99). “A Brewing Storm,” an e-single, is #13 on the New York Times e-book bestseller list this week, and #39 on the USA Today list. As of this writing, it’s #30 on the Nook bestseller list and does not appear on the Kindle bestseller list.

What it’s about: To be clear, Richard Castle is not a real person — he’s a character on the ABC show “Castle,” where he’s played by actor Nathan Fillion. On the show, Castle is a mystery novelist and author of the “Heat Wave” series. Hyperion, which is owned by ABC, released the “Heat Wave” titles as actual books. “A Brewing Storm” is the first in Castle’s “Derrick Storm” CIA series, which he also writes on the show. (Um…get it?) ABC will release two more Derrick Storm e-singles this summer.

How it became a bestseller: “Castle” fans had requested Derrick Storm books, which are often mentioned on the show. Hyperion hopes the “Storm” series will serve as a bridge between seasons 4 and 5 of “Castle” — the season 4 finale aired on May 7.

Members of “Club Castle,” the fan community on ABC’s Castle website, got early access to “A Brewing Storm”‘s cover by completing a trivia challenge March 26-28. They saw the cover before retailers did. ABC.com also posted three free chapters of the book. And the full-length “Heat Wave” was chosen as an Amazon Kindle Daily Deal on May 8, which likely drove readers to the e-single as well.

“A Brewing Storm” on … Amazon ($1.99) | Apple ($2.99) | Barnes & Noble ($1.97) | Google ($2.51) | Kobo ($2.99)

New York Times bestseller list, week of 5/20/12

Here are the titles in the top-35 that appear on the e-book bestseller list, but not on the print bestseller list (click the link to expand the chart).

USA Today bestseller list, week of 5/3/12

USA Today includes all formats and genres in one list and notes which format of a book sold best. Here are the titles in the top-35 where e-books outsold print (click the link to expand the chart).

This week’s featured title

The book: “The Marriage Bargain” by Jennifer Probst (Entangled, $2.99). “The Marriage Bargain” is #11 on the New York Times e-book bestseller list this week, and #20 on the USA today list.

Copies of “The Marriage Bargain” sold: 152,668

What it’s about: A bookstore owner casts a love spell to save her home. When a billionaire offers her a marriage in name only, she accepts, but neither bargained for love.

How it hit the bestseller list: Probst, the author of several erotic and contemporary romance titles, built up her presence on social media months before the book was published in February. She did a 20-stop blog tour in early 2012 to promote the book. Entangled bought a Goodreads ad and “steady positive reviews began to trickle in from various outlets.”

A sequel, “The Marriage Trap,” comes out in June, with a third book in the series, “The Marriage Mistake,” due in the fall.

“The Marriage Bargain” on … Amazon |Barnes & Noble | Kobo

New York Times bestseller list, week of 5/13/12

Here are the titles in the top-35 that appear on the e-book bestseller list, but not on the print bestseller list (click the link to expand the chart).

USA Today bestseller list, week of 5/3/12

USA Today includes all formats and genres in one list and notes which format of a book sold best. Here are the titles in the top-35 where e-books outsold print (click the link to expand the chart).

No changes until June at the earliest

Simon & Schuster, Hachette and HarperCollins agreed to settle with Justice. If the settlement is approved — following a 60-day comment period — those three publishers must terminate existing agreements with Apple’s iBookstore within seven days. In addition, as the Competitive Impact Statement on the settlement explains, the three settling publishers must terminate contracts with other retailers (like Amazon and Barnes & Noble) that contain any “restrictions on an e-book retailer’s ability to set the retail price of any e-book” and any most favored nation clauses. Those MFN clauses — which can be found in all agency publishers’ contracts with retailers, not just the contracts with Apple — state that no other retailer can charge a lower e-book price.

Publishers must terminate the contracts with retailers other than Apple “as soon as each contract permits” — i.e., when the contract expires — but the retailers also have the option to terminate the contracts “on just 30 days notice.” After the original contracts are terminated, the settling publishers may enter into new agreements with retailers (including Apple).

Under those new agreements, for the next two years, retailers may set, change or lower e-book prices and may offer discounts and other promotions “to encourage consumers to purchase one or more e-books.”

After two years, the settling publishers may once again enter into agency pricing agreements that restrict retailers from setting, changing, or lowering e-book prices. However, price MFN clauses are prohibited for five years.

OK, I just want to know what it means for e-book prices

Readers are likely to see lower prices on e-books published by HarperCollins, Hachette and Simon & Schuster — at least at Amazon, which expressed its glee over the settlement. But you won’t see those lower e-book prices until at least June — remember there’s that 60-day waiting period, and then publishers and retailers have to enter into new contracts. It’s in Amazon’s best interest to enact the new contracts as quickly as possible so that it can start discounting the settling publishers’ e-books, as it has said it plans to do. Other e-book retailers, like Barnes & Noble and Kobo, are likely to want to enter into new contracts quickly as well so that they are on a more even playing field with Amazon. They may not be able to afford to discount a wide range of e-books as deeply as Amazon can, but they will want that option.

As soon as the new contracts are in place (and Justice will be holding onto a copy of each of those contracts), let the discounting begin. Forrester analyst James McQuivey told Digital Book World last week that he expects Amazon to discount e-books slowly and strategically, starting with bestsellers. Publishing industry consultant Mike Shatzkin, on the other hand, believes Amazon “will do the splashiest discounting they possibly can, making the point as loudly as possible that they deliver the lowest prices to the consumer and daring their competiton to match them.”

McQuivey and Shatzkin may both be right. Amazon may not deeply discount all of the titles it carries from HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Hachette, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see some shockingly cheap bestsellers from those publishers — think massive summer promotions where big titles by authors like James Patterson, Jodi Picoult and Nicholas Sparks are $1.99.

Bundles, buy-one-get-one-free and more stuff you haven’t seen before

Justice notes that agency pricing “prevented e-book retailers from experimenting with innovative pricing strategies…such as offering e-books under an ‘all-you-can-read’ subscription model where consumers would pay a flat monthly fee,” bundles or buy-one-get-one-free promotions. The settlement opens the door for those types of promotions on Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster titles.

For example, retailers could bundle frontlist and backlist titles from those publishers for a flat fee. They could offer a free e-book with the purchase of a print book. They could offer, say, romance or mystery bundles with titles from multiple publishers. They could even give e-books away for free. And, presumably, Amazon can start including Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster titles in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library for Amazon Prime members — if it does what it did with titles from some other publishers and pays the wholesale price each time an e-book is borrowed. (In other words, the three settling publishers wouldn’t have to agree to offer their books in the KOLL. Amazon can now just go ahead and do it.)

What about Apple’s iBookstore?

Apple’s iBookstore launched with agency pricing in effect, and it does not sell e-books from non-agency publishers. (That’s why, for instance, you still can’t find The Hunger Games — published by non-agency publisher Scholastic — in the iBookstore.) So it will be very interesting to see how Apple responds to the settlement. If it simply removes Simon & Schuster, Hachette and HarperCollins titles from its shelves without negotiating new contracts — yes, this would mean Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography, published by Simon & Schuster, would no longer be available through iTunes — it will be losing a large part of its catalog.

If Apple agrees to negotiate new contracts that don’t require agency pricing, it could also make agreements with the many publishers who have not been able to sell their books in the iBookstore before. That would mean a much wider book selection for iBookstore shoppers.

What will I see at Kobo, Barnes & Noble and other non-Amazon e-book retailers?

Barnes & Noble, Kobo and other e-book retailers will be under immense pressure to discount Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster e-books to the same prices that Amazon offers. Keep in mind, though, that these stores have survived so far without always matching Amazon’s prices on titles from non-agency publishers. The settlement puts more titles from big bestselling authors in play, but Kobo and B&N do not necessarily have to match on every price in order to stand some ground against Amazon. (That said, the settlement makes their lives harder, not easier.)

I’d expect to see B&N and Kobo rolling out increased loyalty programs and other perks to try to keep readers shopping with them. For instance, Barnes & Noble could offer two free titles to anyone who buys a new Nook. They could start other membership, loyalty or subscription programs. Barnes & Noble already has the ability to bundle e-books with print transactions from its in-store cash registers and might start offering more e-book specials to in-store shoppers.

Barnes & Noble and Kobo could also turn their attention to the titles that Amazon is paying less attention to — say a HarperCollins backlist book. They could run special promotions or reading groups around those books. (Amazon could do this, too, of course.)

Retailers could have been doing many of these things all along, but non-Amazon players are going to feel the pressure to innovate quickly. They may get added support from the settling publishers (in terms of promotion, marketing suggestions, etc.) to the extent that that is not forbidden by the settlement.

Will DRM go away?

Many — including Ruth Curry and Emily Gould of Emily Books, here on paidContent — are arguing that publishers’ best tool against Amazon is to drop DRM on their titles. Science fiction author Charlie Stross, in a much-read post, writes, “If the major publishers switch to selling ebooks without DRM, then they can enable customers to buy books from a variety of outlets and move away from the walled garden of the Kindle store.” As GigaOM’s Mathew Ingram has argued, publishers see a feasible model for removing DRM in Pottermore.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if at least one big-six publisher announces plans to drop DRM this year — Hachette’s Maja Thomas hinted at it recently — but the actual implementation of the new policy could take awhile as it would likely require negotiations with literary agents as well as the implementation of more robust direct sales systems from publishers’ own sites.

What doesn’t change

Agency pricing itself has not been declared illegal. Publishers who enacted agency pricing later — namely, Random House — can keep using the model. They don’t have to enter into new contracts. In addition, Macmillan and Penguin are fighting the lawsuit and can continue selling e-books under the agency model until a settlement or decision is reached (unless a judge explicitly forbids them to use the model before that).

Random House could, of course, renegotiate its contracts and remove agency pricing if it thinks that its titles will be at a disadvantage against cheaper non-agency titles from HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins. But since agency pricing leaves it in Random House’s power to discount books across retailers, we might simply see deeper and more discounts coming from Random House itself.

And if Random House doesn’t deeply discount big titles from bestselling authors — but those titles stay at or near the top of bestseller lists anyway — that will support the belief that readers are willing to pay a premium for books by certain authors.

Some limits

Amazon cannot now, for example, make every single HarperCollins title it carries free (even if it were inclined to do so). When it comes time for Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins and Hachette to negotiate their new contracts, the settlement allows them to “negotiate a commitment from an e-book retailer that a retailer’s aggregate expenditure on discounts and promotions of the Settling Defendant’s e-books will not exceed the retailer’s aggregate commission under an agency agreement in which the publisher sets the e-book price and the retailer is compensated through a commission.” The settling publishers can also negotiate one-year contracts that “prevent e-book retailers from cumulatively selling that Settling Defendant’s e-books at a loss over the period of the contract.”

In other words, under that type of contract, Amazon (or any other retailer who agrees to the contract) could discount certain titles as much as it wants, or give them away for free. But it could not sell a publisher’s “entire catalogue at a sustained loss.” So if Amazon and a settling publisher sign a contract that gives Amazon a 30 percent commission on each title sold, Amazon cannot discount that publisher’s entire catalogue by more than the total amount of the commission it receives.

Bestselling author Richard Russo, Forrester’s James McQuivey and Barnes & Noble’s Jonathan Shar will be among those discussing the future of e-books at paidContent 2012, May 23 at the TimesCenter in New York, NY. Register here.

When customers visit a physical Barnes & Noble store and purchase Patterson’s Kill Alex Cross in hardcover, plus any other Patterson title for children or adults in any format, they will receive a Patterson novella, Merry Christmas, Alex Cross–exclusive to Barnes & Noble. Barnes & Noble’s press release explains how the package will work: the company’s “state-of-the art cashiering system will allow retail customers to seamlessly combine a Nook Book purchase with the purchase of the new hardcover title in-store, and leave with the authorization codes to download their digital purchase, as well as the digital version of the free, exclusive novella on any of their Nook devices.”

The promotion is only available in Barnes & Noble retail stores, not online. Merry Christmas, Alex Cross will not be available for purchase as a standalone e-book or print book.

Here’s why this deal is important:

»  Barnes & Noble is using its physical stores to facilitate online transactions. According to the press release, the company is changing its in-store cashiering system to make it easier for customers to purchase e-books and print books simultaneously. In the Patterson promotion, we see that a customer who chooses a Patterson e-book as their second book can purchase both in the store in one transaction, then go home with a code to download the e-book (and the free novella). I can imagine a time when that e-book could be wirelessly transmitted to the customer’s Nook at the time of the in-store purchase, cutting out that at-home step.

»  Barnes & Noble has an exclusive with one of the most popular (and the #1 highest-paid) fiction authors in the United States. Patterson is also recording ads for Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet. Amazon does not have a similar promotional deal with any high-profile, traditionally published author. We’ve seen Barnes & Noble retaliate against Amazon for getting an exclusive for DC Entertainment e-books and we’ve heard William Lynch say B&N won’t carry books in its stores if it can’t also sell them as e-books. Now, instead of just reacting, Barnes & Noble is launching an exclusive of its own, one that will excite a lot of readers. Barnes & Noble did not answer my questions about who is considered the publisher of the book (James Patterson, Patterson’s traditional publisher Little Brown, or Barnes & Noble) and did not disclose how the financial arrangement is working (whether Patterson is donating the work, receiving a flat fee or receiving some kind of royalty based on the number of bundles sold).

Updated: A Barnes & Noble spokeswoman tells me that Little, Brown is the book’s publisher and is mentioned on the book’s spine and copyright page, but Barnes & Noble is handling the production for the physical book. In addition, Barnes & Noble says no royalties or fees are associated with the promotion. Hachette Book Group (which owns Little, Brown) said in a statement, “When Barnes and Noble, the largest chain book store in the country, came to James with this idea, it was clear that they were the uniquely positioned to make this concept work. Hachette Book Group is also happy that this promotion features James Patterson’s #1-bestselling young adult fiction series, Witch & Wizard, and that Barnes & Noble continues to champion kids’ books. James Patterson is looking forward to working with any account — big or small — on other innovative retail concepts to help promote his books for readers of all ages.”

»  The stores and hardcover book are a key component of the deal. The novella is available as an e-book, but it’s also available as a print book. It’s only available through B&N retail stores and one of the books purchased has to be a hardcover. It will be interesting to see how Barnes & Noble continues to carry out this physical-plus-digital strategy.

Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) said that as of yesterday, Locke had sold 1,010,370 Kindle books. The 60-year-old Locke, who lives in Louisville, Ky, has written nine novels, mostly thrillers, including Saving Rachel, which hit the New York Times (NYSE: NYT) e-book bestseller list.

Locke prices all of his novels at $0.99 and does not plan to raise prices. His latest book is How I Sold 1 Million E-Books in 5 Months, a marketing guide for self-published authors, which sells for $4.99 on Kindle.

Amanda Hocking, the 26-year-old who’s probably closest thing in the self-published world to being a household name (especially after the profile that ran in the NYT Magazine this past weekend), has said she’s sold over a million copies of her e-books, but apparently hasn’t hit a million on Kindle yet.

In keeping with the digital times, Airborne will be released online one chapter at a time, and it won’t be mass-produced in print. But this isn’t Wikipedia-style crowd-sourcing: Airborne won’t be subject to ongoing edits by an unlimited number of people. Still, it will be interesting to see whether a book written by multiple authors is remotely readable and can generate meaningful sales.