Random House is now the only big six publisher to allow unrestricted access to all of its e-books in libraries—and it said yesterday it will continue to do so, though it is raising prices.

Byliner recently announced that it has sold 100,000 original e-singles, and other publishers are finding similar success with the format: The Atavist sold over 100,000 copies of ten e-singles combined last year, company CEO Evan Ratliff announced at a Digital Book World Panel this afternoon. Meanwhile, a Penguin e-single by…

Hoping to skirt Penguin’s library e-book restrictions by checking out a hot new title as a digital audiobook instead? Sorry, that strategy will no longer work as Penguin changed its library policies again today.

OverDrive released its lists of the most-downloaded e-books from libraries in December 2011. These lists look pretty different from the current New York Times e-book bestseller lists. Here’s why, plus a few interesting tidbits.

I asked publishers and authors how they’re promoting their e-books for the holidays and got answers from bundling and free samplers to Kindle Fire giveaways. Click through to see who’s doing what.

$9.99 is often treated as a magic price—the cost of a New York Times bestseller on Kindle back in the good old days, before big-six publishers adopted agency pricing models and ended Amazon’s discounting of their books. However, for a variety of reasons, few readers ever had the chance to…

Penguin is once again making its e-books available to libraries through Kindle, OverDrive reports. New Penguin e-books, however, remain unavailable to libraries on any platform. Update, 11/28/2011: Penguin has issued a statement and I have updated this post.

Following yesterday’s news that Penguin, citing security concerns, is pulling its new e-books from libraries—and making none of them available for library lending through Kindle—many are wondering why the publisher would do such a thing. (Penguin and Random House had been the only two “big six” publishers to offer unfettered…

Citing unspecified “concerns about the security of our digital editions,” Penguin Group USA is pulling new e-books from libraries; in addition, it is not lending any e-books to libraries through Kindle.

Many popular self-published authors are coming down hard on the self-publishing services that Penguin added to community writing site Book Country earlier this week, calling the initiative overpriced, royalty-grabbing and “truly awful.”

Aspiring writers come to Book Country, Penguin Group USA’s online genre fiction community, to post and workshop their romance, science fiction/fantasy, thriller and mystery manuscripts in progress. Now Book Country is adding a self-publishing option, with packages ranging from $99 to $549. While companies like HarperCollins have launched their own…

Penguin is the latest publisher to test out e-singles with the launch of Penguin Shorts, an ongoing digital series of original fiction and nonfiction titles from authors like Colm Toibin and Anita Brookner.

The FT and Penguin are two of the most recognized brands among those owned by media giant Pearson (NYSE: PSO). But should the company sell them off to focus more on Education, its real growth engine of the moment? That seems to be the opinion of at least some analysts…

Pearson (NYSE: PSO) Australia’s acquisition of REDGroup’s online business, including the Borders Australia website and the website of bookstore chain Angus & Robertson, won’t give Pearson-owned publisher Penguin a monopoly over Australia’s e-book supply chain, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has decided.

A little social media experiment is underway at the publishers Hamish Hamilton/Penguin UK: the publisher has tied up with the social media site PeerIndex to try out a new way of promoting its books. In what the publisher is calling an industry first, Penguin today is launching a campaign to…

Technically, Bookish doesn’t have any revenue stream yet. The joint venture of Hachette Book Group, Penguin Group (USA), and Simon & Schuster (NYSE: CBS) went public Friday after more than a year in stealth but the launch is planned for summer. CEO Paulo Lemgruber and I chatted via e-mail about…

Three major publishers are behind the latest effort to boost print and digital book reading. Bookish, backed by Hachette Book Group, Penguin Group (USA), and Simon & Schuster (NYSE: CBS), promises an editorially independent platform for discovery and sales. It has been in stealth mode for months as “Obikosh.” (Get…

HMV (LSE: HMV), HarperCollins, Penguin and Random House are financing a new “social retail” service aiming to help readers find, buy and share books.

As the race to be be ebook format of choice hots up, Penguin is making some bold, experimental bets. These first-look demos of forthcoming books from iPad’s iBook Store, presented by Penguin Books’ CEO John Makinson in London on Tuesday, give an idea how publishers might approach Apple’s tablet…