The EU said the merger doesn’t threaten competition. In a press release, the European Commission said of its investigation:

“The Commission assessed the impact of the transaction on the upstream markets for the acquisition of authors’ rights for English language books in the European Economic Area (EEA) and worldwide, and on the downstream markets for the sale of English language books to dealers in the EEA, in particular in the UK and Ireland. The Commission found that on both types of markets the new entity Penguin Random House will continue to face competition from several large and numerous small and medium sized publishers. As regards the sale of English language books, the merged entity will furthermore face a concentrated retail base, such as supermarkets for print books and large online retailers for ebooks, like Amazon. In addition, the Commission’s investigation revealed no evidence that the transaction would lead to risks of coordination among publishers in relation to the acquisition of authors’ rights and the sale of English language books to dealers.”

As I reported last month, Random House and Penguin announced their merger last October and the U.S. Department of Justice approved it in February, followed by Australia and New Zealand. Random House’s parent company Bertelsmann would own 53 percent of the combined company, and Penguin parent company Pearson would hold 47 percent. Random House Penguin’s goal is to enter emerging markets and expand its digital business.

The merger awaits approval by Canada and China.

In the case, HarperCollins says that its 1971 contract with George gives it the right to publish Julie of the Wolves in any format, including as an ebook. Open Road argues that HarperCollins never had ebook rights. George, who was 92 when HarperCollins first filed its lawsuit, said that she was “with Open Road all the way,” but she died in May 2012 and never gave a deposition.

HarperCollins argues that its contract included future types of works, and  that print books and ebooks are the same. Open Road contends that it did have the right to publish Julie of the Wolves because ebooks didn’t exist in the 1970s, and because HarperCollins’ 1971 contract with George didn’t specify a royalty rate on electronic works.

Both of the motions filed last week refer to a 2001 case in which Random House sued Rosetta for publishing ebook editions of Random House works. A federal judge ruled that ebooks and books weren’t the same thing and that Random House couldn’t block RosettaBooks from selling the titles. Random House appealed, but the decision was upheld, and Random House and RosettaBooks ultimately settled. Because of the outcome of that case, HarperCollins specifies in its motion how different the Julie of the Wolves case is from Random House v. Rosetta, and Open Road stresses the cases’ similarities.

HarperCollins: Ebooks weren’t around in 1971, but we knew they were coming

HarperCollins notes (here’s the PDF of the motion) that its 1971 contract grants it the right to publish Julie ”in book form,” and says that the grant “encompasses ebook publishing rights of the type Open Road has unlawfully appropriated, particularly given the virtually identical reading experience afforded by its offering to the hardcover and paperback offerings of HarperCollins, with which it directly competes.”

HarperCollins and Open Road both focus closely on the “storage and retrieval and information systems” clause in the original contract. The contract had stated:

“the publisher shall grant no license without the prior written constant of the Author with respect to the following rights in the work: use thereof in storage and retrieval and information systems, and/or whether through computer, computer-stored, mechanical or other electronic means now known or hereafter invented…”

HarperCollins argues that it’s “no stretch to recognize that ‘storage and retrieval information systems’ fully encompass the display of an ebook via an ebook reading device.” In a section of its motion on “the antecedents to ebooks,” it mentions, for instance, a 1968 article “envisioning the Dynabook, a new storage and retrieval device the size of a three-ring binder that would have a multipurpose screen that could be used for both reading and writing.” HarperCollins concludes that “without doubt, as of 1971, when the Agreement was executed, ebooks of the type offered by entities such as Open Road were foreseeable…Electronic delivery of books and other textual works was further anticipated as early as the 1950s and 1960s, when computer scientists envisioned and experimented with devices that could store books, documents and even entire libraries electronically.”

Open Road: “Information, storage and retrieval systems” don’t mean “ebooks”

In its motion (PDF), Open Road says that while HarperCollins takes the phrase “in book form” to include the right to publish an ebook as well, the judge in Random House  vs. Rosetta “found that this term excluded ebooks…It has been for decades the standard grant language that trade usage in the publishing industry has been understood to mean paper forms of the work.” Open Road cites HarperCollins’ own online dictionary, for instance, which defines “book” as “a number of sheets of paper, parchment, etc. with writing or printing on them” and has a separate entry for ebooks: “Hence, ‘book form’ and ‘digital form’ are clearly distinguished as separate forms of publication.”

Open Road also looks at HarperCollins’ later contracts and finds that, unlike the 1971 contract with George, they referred more explicitly to ebooks and didn’t use ”information, storage and retrieval systems” to mean ebook rights. Open Road adds, “ebooks and information storage and retrieval systems are apples and oranges…Harper cannot reasonably argue it now believes there is no difference between ebooks and information storage and retrieval systems, in light of its own differentiation of the two technologies in its earlier contracts.”

Open Road focuses on the fact that digital royalties were absent from the 1971 contract. It says it

“offered to pay Ms. George a 50% royalty to publish her work as an ebook. Ms. George was intrigued by Open Road’s offer and the prospect of bringing her work to a new medium. Still, she wanted to keep her works ‘in-house’ with her print publisher. So she asked Harper to publish Julie of the Wolves as an ebook for the same royalty. Harper flatly refused. It told her it would publish the ebook, but only for a 25% royalty … even though … (1) the contract is silent as to ebook publishing rights and lacks a royalty provision in exchange for those rights, (2) Ms. George expressly reserved all rights not specifically granted, and (3) the technology for such a product did not exist until many years later and a commercially viable ebook publishing market did not take hold until just a few years ago.”

The publisher argues that there was no nascent ebook market in 1971 “or 1981 or 1991,” saying, “the issue is not whether a few isolated academic visionaries could dream of a day when the words of an author’s work could be digitally transmitted through space.”

HarperCollins and Open Road both declined to comment, and a court date has not yet been set.

HarperCollins motion

Open Road motion

Citing two unidentified sources, Reuters said that the publishers are “set to win unconditional EU regulatory approval.”

Random House and Penguin announced their merger last October, and the U.S. Department of Justice approved it quickly, in February, followed by Australia and New Zealand. Random House’s parent company Bertelsmann would own 53 percent of the combined company, and Penguin parent company Pearson would hold 47 percent. Penguin Random House would be the largest book publisher in the world, and the merger is designed to help the companies tackle emerging markets and invest in new digital models.

Reuters notes that “the spokesman for competition policy at the European Commission, Antoine Colombani, declined to comment. The EU competition authority has set an April 5 deadline for its decision.”

“We have closed our investigation and took no action,” a DOJ spokeswoman confirmed.

The merger, which remains under review by other antitrust authorities including the European Commission and the Canadian Competition Bureau, would create the world’s largest publisher. According to the announcement sent by Pearson, “Pearson and Bertelsmann continue to expect the transaction to close in the second half of 2013, after all necessary approvals have been received.”

Pearson’s full announcement:

Pearson and Bertelsmann today announce that they have been notified by the U.S. Department of Justice that it has closed its investigation into the proposed merger of Penguin and Random House, without conditions.

The two companies announced their agreement to combine Penguin and Random House in October 2012. The proposed merger is currently under review by the European Commission, the Canadian Competition Bureau and various other antitrust authorities around the world. Pearson and Bertelsmann continue to expect the transaction to close in the second half of 2013, after all necessary approvals have been received.

Following completion, Bertelsmann will own 53% and Pearson 47% of Penguin Random House. It will encompass all of Random House and Penguin Group’s publishing units in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, India and South Africa, as well as Penguin’s operations in China and Random House’s publishers in Spain and Latin America. Pearson and Bertelsmann believe that the combined organisation, the world’s leading consumer publishing company, will have a stronger platform and greater resources to invest in rich content, new digital publishing models and high-growth emerging markets.

I got a demo of Bookish at the company’s trendy, book-filled offices in Manhattan’s Flatiron District last week, and had a chance to use the site further on Monday when it was prematurely available online for several hours as it was being tested. Overall, I think the long-delayed Bookish is off to a promising start.

Bookish has the opportunity to shape book discovery and offers publishers a chance to directly engage with readers. It also allows them to tiptoe into direct sales. I’m less intrigued by the original editorial content: I’m not sure it differentiates itself enough from other book-related content on the web to draw users to the site for the first time. Once those users make their way to the site, though, they’ll find a clean, easy-to-use design, and an algorithm that may well find them their next book — even though it’s limited to less than a quarter of the books on the site for now. Here’s my overview of the site.

 The basics: Books and authors

While only three of the big-six publishers are financially backing the site, the other three — Random House, HarperCollins and Macmillan — are making their books available through it, along with 10 other publishers including Scholastic and Houghton Mifflin. In total, that’s 1.2 million unique titles spanning 18 genres (fiction and literature, children’s, cookbooks, and so on), and 400,000 authors have profile pages. The book pages include basic information, a preview of the first chapter, related news and videos, and a roundup of any “must-read” lists that the book has appeared on (for more on those lists, see below). Each book page also includes purchase links (more on that below, too).

Algorithm-generated book recommendations

Online book discovery is a huge problem for publishers, and Bookish tackles it with a recommendation algorithm that lets users input up to four titles to find what to read next. “We’re very much a technology company,” Karen Sun, an MIT grad (and book blogger) who is heading the company’s recommendation engine, told me. “This is probably the largest venture in the book space, in terms of data.” Sun explained that while Amazon and Goodreads primarily deliver book recommendations based on “collaborative filtering” — namely, a user’s purchasing or rating and reviewing history as well as those of other users — Bookish doesn’t have that user or purchase data yet. Instead, it relies on “deep, introspective” data: “Recommendations are based on the books and understanding of the books.” The recommendation looks at features like the authors, editors and illustrators who contributed to a book, the awards a book has won, and genre and publication date, then layers on a machine-learning component that parses user and professional reviews to try to distill themes, concepts and sentiments. Insights from the editorial team are included, too.

A user who liked The Help, for instance, receives recommendations for Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford — another women’s fiction title that features race relations — and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a book that, like The Help, includes an aspiring female author. Type in Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point and the engine pulled up four similar “big ideas” books, but also two Spanish-language titles that were out of place even if the subject matter was similar (and you’ll see a Spanish-language edition of The Room in the recommendations for The Help above).

For now, Bookish’s recommendation engine works with only about 250,000 of the 1.2 million books on the site. Sun says the engine will improve over time, and will eventually integrate reader reviews and user actions — other books users have looked at and rated on the site.

E-commerce: Essential, but…

Each book on the site can be purchased in print or digital formats directly through Bookish or from another retailer — there are affiliate links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, IndieBound, Apple and Kobo.

Distributor Baker & Taylor is handling all of Bookish’s direct sales. For now, ebooks purchased through Bookish are only available in EPUB and PDF formats, for reading on iPad, Android, Nook and desktop — no Kindle.

Bookish seems to want to stress that it’s not cutting into other retailers’ sales, even though a serious direct-sales outlet is something that book publishers desperately need.

“We want to be able to say you can buy [a book] here and it’s reasonably priced. We’re not trying to steal sales away from other places,” CEO Khazaei told me. Publishers probably don’t care about taking sales from Amazon, but they may not want to sour relationships with retailers like Barnes & Noble and the independent bookstores represented by IndieBound.

Bookish’s print and ebook prices appeared to match those offered by Amazon, though I wasn’t able to test many titles. Khazaei told me that “I don’t know how the pricing decisions are made, really,” Khazaei said. “I assume [Baker & Taylor] is tracking [prices on other sites] but we just leave it in their hands.” While the site seems like an obvious place for publishers to run special sales on both print and digital books, that doesn’t seem to be a priority for now. Update: Khazaei stressed to me that his lack of involvement with pricing is required by the Department of Justice in order to be compliant with antitrust regulations. (The DOJ sued Hachette, Penguin and Simon & Schuster, along with Macmillan and HarperCollins, last year for allegedly colluding to set ebook prices; Hachette, Penguin and S&S all settled.)

Original editorial content along with the algorithm

Bookish has seven full-time editors who each manage different genres and update those sections daily with original book coverage. The site is also soliciting pieces from well-known authors and other public figures. In one ongoing feature, for instance, editors from The Onion review books. Other editorial features at launch include a column by Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert and an interview between bestselling thriller authors Michael Connelly and Michael Kortya. In addition to that content, the site’s editors are curating columns and lists of books like “The Biggest BFF Breakups in YA Books” and “Big Ideas.”

Advertising, revenue and partnerships

Bookish is collaborating with USA Today’s books website. Its original editorial content will be syndicated on USA Today’s website, and the technology that Bookish uses to let readers view the first chapter of a book and to offer book recommendations will also be included on USA Today’s site. In exchange, Bookish will feature USA Today’s book bestseller lists on bookish.com.

In addition to book sales, Bookish will get revenue from advertising. For now the site’s ad slots are taken up with books from the three launch partners, but eventually the company will expand advertising to other publishers and to companies from outside the book business. Prior to its launch two years ago, Bookish had announced an advertising and content syndication deal with AOL Huffington Post, but that’s off the drawing board for now. A company spokeswoman told me Bookish is “in discussions about continuing to work with AOL in the future.”

Not a focus: Social, self-publishing

Other publishers can sign an agreement with Bookish to add their titles to the site. (Khazaei told me Bookish doesn’t charge publishers anything to join, but they presumably have to fulfill a number of requirements to be included.) However, self-published authors can’t add their books. “The focus right now is on traditionally published titles,” Khazaei said.

Also at launch, the social features that are a key part of Goodreads’ mission are absent from Bookish. Users can’t friend or follow each other — the focus is on a reader’s individual interests. I found that refreshing: Just because you’re Facebook friends with someone doesn’t mean that he or she shares your book preferences, and I prefer the algorithm-driven approach.

Hachette makes older ebooks available to libraries through digital distributor OverDrive. In an email obtained by Gary Price at Infodocket, Hachette tells libraries using OverDrive that it “will be raising its eBook prices on October 1, 2012 on [its] currently available eBook catalog (~3,500 eBook titles with release dates of April 2010 and earlier). On average prices will increase 220%.”

“We believe these terms fairly reflect the value to the library customer, that the ebooks will not need periodic replacement as do print copies, and there is no limit on amount of borrowing activity per ebook copy,” Hachette VP, communications Sophie Cottrell told me.

Separately, Hachette is testing a pilot program that makes new ebooks available to some libraries. That pilot program is presumably not run with OverDrive but with its competitors like 3M Cloud Library and Baker & Taylor’s Axis360.

Random House is the only big-six publisher to offer unrestricted access to its titles, despite the price increases this spring. Penguin recently ended its relationship with OverDrive and no longer distribute e-books and digital audiobooks to most libraries, though it is running a one-year pilot program with 3M with the New York and Brooklyn Public Libraries. Macmillan and Simon & Schuster do not make e-books available to libraries. HarperCollins allows e-books to be checked out 26 times before the library has to buy a new copy.

Photo courtesy of Flickr / Ian Barbour

Fremantle produces and distributes TV shows internationally and is part of the RTL Group, Europe’s largest TV and radio broadcast company. It will have a first-look deal on Random House properties. Random House Television will be part of Random House Studio, the entertainment division formerly known as Random House Films.

According to the release, “Random House Television will work together with Random House’s editors and publishers, and their authors’ agents, to identify and acquire performance rights for the full range of broadcast network, cable, and premium television scripted formats.”

Jeffrey Levine, formerly of Spring Creek Productions, has been hired as head of TV and will report to Random House Studio president Peter Gethers. Levine will work out of Fremantle’s Los Angeles office.

Release:

FREMANTLEMEDIA & RANDOM HOUSE FORM EXCLUSIVE TELEVISION PARTNERSHIP 

Newly Established Random House Television To Be Headed By Jeffrey Levine

July 25, 2012 – FremantleMedia, the producer and distributor of several of the world’s most widely-watched television series, and Random House, Inc., the U.S. division of Random House, the world’s largest trade-book publisher, both companies of Bertelsmann AG, announced today a major new creative and strategic partnership to develop scripted television programming for the U.S. and international markets based on the fiction and nonfiction books published by Random House’s imprints in North America and internationally.

The first-look deal with FremantleMedia will reside within Random House Television, a newly created part of Random House Studio, the publisher’s rebranded and expanded entertainment division led by Peter Gethers, President. Random House Television will work together with Random House’s editors and publishers, and their authors’ agents, to identify and acquire performance rights for the full range of broadcast network, cable, and premium television scripted formats.

The partnership will also seek to collaborate with Random House authors to develop original scripted television properties they might create.

United Talent Agency represented Random House Studio and negotiated the first-look deal with FremantleMedia.

Jeffrey Levine has been appointed Head of Television for Random House Television, based in FremantleMedia’s Los Angeles offices, reporting to Mr. Gethers. He will work closely with Jeff Tahler, FremantleMedia Enterprises Senior Vice President of Global Content, and Tony Optican, Senior Vice President of Scripted Programming for FremantleMedia North America, and with the entire Random House Studio team.

Mr. Levine joins the company from Spring Creek Productions, where he worked on the development of many of the company’s features including “Blood Diamond,” “Monster-In-Law” and the now casting “This Is Where I Leave You.”  Levine was an Executive Producer on HBO’s “Too Big To Fail,” which garnered 11 Emmy® nominations and won the WGA award for best adaption for Long Form. Previously Mr. Levine was Vice President, Movies and Mini-Series at Turner Broadcasting Company, where he oversaw the development of such projects as “James Dean” (Golden Globe®,  Emmy®, ACE, and BFC winner), and “Mists of Avalon” (9 Emmy® nominations, WGA nominee).

Also joining the Random House Television team in Los Angeles is Christina Malach, Executive Story Editor, Random House Studio. The New York team under Mr. Gethers is Valerie Cates and Claudia Herr, both Executive Story editors, and Brady Emerson, Story Editor, Random House Studio.

In announcing the partnership, David Ellender, Global CEO of FremantleMedia Enterprises, said “This is a hugely exciting coming together of two companies in the Bertelsmann family. As one of the world’s most successful book publishers with a global roster of admired authors, Random House is the perfect partner for FremantleMedia as we continue to develop and expand our slate of world-class scripted content for international audiences. We warmly welcome Peter, Jeff and the entire Random House Television team, and look forward to working with them to develop high-quality television projects with wide appeal.”

Peter Gethers said, “Partnering with the very talented and savvy FremantleMedia team gives us a wonderful opportunity to significantly increase the many options we already offer to Random House authors around the world. This alliance will enable us to help them expand into new creative and commercial areas to broaden their audience. Random House Television is a natural extension of the partnership we already enjoy with our writers and will help them flourish in an increasingly complex, exciting, and interdependent global entertainment business. I’m thrilled to have Jeff on board with us, and with the opportunity to work with FremantleMedia in the U.S. and internationally.”

Image courtesy of Shutterstock / alexmillos

The pilot program, which is initially available for Kindle and Nook and will be available on other platforms by the end of the year, launches on Sunday, July 15 with six books. Five are published by Random House: Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, 44 Charles Street by Danielle Steel, Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson. The sixth book, State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, is published by HarperCollins.

The ebooks are sold like gift cards and will be found in Target’s electronics section, near the e-readers. (Target no longer sells Kindles, but it carries other e-readers, like the Nook.) Here’s how it works: A consumer buys a card for a specific title. Target takes a cut and Livrada gets the rest. The consumer (or gift card recipient) goes to Livrada’s website to activate the gift card and choose whether he wants the book for Kindle or Nook. Livrada buys the book directly from Barnes & Noble or Amazon and sends it to the consumer’s e-reader.

Ebook gift-giving is still in early stages, but it generally happens entirely online. When you buy a Kindle book as a gift for someone else, for instance, they find out when they get an email. Livrada wants to make it more physical. “Email-driven gifting is boring,” Livrada cofounder and CEO Leonard Chen, formerly a senior director of digital strategy and business development at Warner Music Group, told me.

A consumer can obviously buy one of Livrada’s ebook cards for himself, but Chen thinks most people will give the cards as presents: “You can give your friend a gift if you know they have an e-reader but you don’t know which [brand].”

“We’re looking for new ways of facilitating gifting of ebooks,” said Chantal Restivo-Alessi, chief digital officer at HarperCollins, “and we look forward to seeing how this new service can extend our reach to a wider range of consumers.”

Random House and HarperCollins pay Livrada marketing fees on the front end. Livrada also collects affiliate fees from Amazon and Barnes & Noble for referring sales.

Livrada’s cofounder and chairman is John Tantum, the founder and former president of Virgin Mobile USA. The company is currently self-funded and Chen says it is not actively fundraising yet — though that could become necessary later this year, when the company hopes to expand to other retailers, sell more titles and add support for platforms like iPad. Livrada is in discussions with other big-six and smaller publishers about adding their books to the program.

Will ebook gifting take off?

Many consumers still don’t know that it’s possible to give ebooks as gifts. Publisher Open Road ran a holiday campaign to try to educate them about the process last year, but most people still just buy ebooks for themselves. Livrada’s cards could make the process more spontaneous and physical. The cards themselves, which emphasize the books’ covers, look good and consumers may be tempted to pick them up. It’s possible, though, that they will still be confused about what the cards are for.

Companies have experimented with selling “physical” ebooks before, but have not gotten very far. Enthrill, a Canadian company, tested such a program last year and is now selling its ebook cards in 102 stores in Alberta. Livrada’s focus on gifting, and the cards’ availability nationwide, could help the concept get off the ground.

McIntosh, who is 43, was Amazon’s director of Kindle content acquisition for Europe from 2008 to 2009, based in Luxembourg. (Fun fact: Her husband Chris Pavone’s bestselling thriller “The Expats” is based on their family’s time in Luxembourg.) Prior to that, she had worked at Random House and its Bantam Doubleday Dell imprint for 14 years.

Random House’s COO position has been vacant for about four years.

In a letter to staff, Random House chairman and  CEO Markus Dohle notes that in her new role, McIntosh will “continue to oversee our digital and print sales, operations, fulfillment, IT, corporate digital product development, corporate marketing development, audio and travel publishing, and third-party distribution.”

Dohle’s full letter:

June 12, 2012

Dear Random House Colleagues,

When I asked MADELINE McINTOSH in 2009 to rejoin Random House I believed she had the wide-ranging skill set, service-focused ethic, and strategic aptitude necessary to help us drive our business forward and increase the audience for our authors’ works. In her role as President, Sales, Operations and Digital, she has exceeded expectations. Madeline has been, and continues to be, a vital part of the transformation of our organization as we redefine the way our sales and corporate operations support and collaborate with our publishing divisions. In recognition of her exceptional leadership and many accomplishments in core areas of our business, I am delighted to announce her appointment as Chief Operating Officer, Random House, Inc., effective immediately. Madeline will continue to report to me, and will continue to oversee our digital and print sales, operations, fulfillment, IT, corporate digital product development, corporate marketing development, audio and travel publishing, and third-party distribution.

I believe that the strong position we hold in the ever-changing marketplace is a testament to the special bridge we’ve established between our creative and corporate teams. This important ingredient of our success is a direct result of cultural and entrepreneurial changes that are taking place in every corner of our company. Together with the publishing groups, Madeline has been instrumental in helping me make those changes. The excellent work that Madeline and her teams are doing to support our publishing programs has ensured that we have become even more content- and author-centric as well as reader- and market-focused.

Madeline personally embodies in so many respects the values that we as a company hold high: She is a transparent and clear communicator; she is dedicated to teamwork and collaboration; and she combines a passion for books and publishing with pragmatic business expertise and the highest integrity. I know that I am among many who benefit daily from Madeline’s insights and ideas, and I am personally grateful to have her as a member of the Random House family and our worldwide senior management team.

Please join me in congratulating her on her appointment as Chief Operating Officer, and in wishing her continued success.

Markus Dohle

Self-publishing, part I: “There are no unrealistic expectations anymore”

Self-publishing platform Smashwords announced this week that it’s making self-publishing faster: Smashwords authors who sell e-books on Kobo and Apple will see faster “shipments” to those platforms, meaning that if they update their e-book’s price the change is reflected in near-real time. “We try to listen to people with unrealistic expectations,” CEO Mark Coker told me, “because their unrealistic expectations are the leading indicator of where we need to go.” Near-instantaneous price changes would allow an author to, say, sell an e-book “at $0.99 for the next five hours only.”

Smashwords is now working with library distributors 3M and Baker & Taylor’s Axis360 so self-published authors can get their e-books into libraries. Right now, the libraries buy Smashwords books at list price (publishers like Random House, meanwhile, charge more for the e-books they make available to libraries). Soon, Smashwords will allow its authors to set special pricing for libraries, Coker told me. “A lot of them are going to want to offer libraries lower pricing,” he said, or “will want to offer their books for free to libraries.”

Smashwords will soon let authors specify the countries where their books are distributed. Right now, authors (and the agents Smashwords works with) have the rights to sell their e-books in some territories, but not others. With the changes, for instance, an author could define that his or her e-book should be distributed “globally, except for commonwealth countries.” Smashwords will also let authors specify their prices by currency — a change from now, when authors have to price in dollars and retailers convert the currency automatically.

Also, Coker said, Smashwords will start accepting EPUB files (as opposed to Word files) later this year. With EPUB 3, that means the company could “potentially take more sophisticated books or enhanced books.”

Getting rid of DRM: This is going to take forever

Macmillan’s Fritz Foy announced at the Publishers Launch BEA conference that the company’s sci-fi/fantasy imprint Tor/Forge will launch a DRM-free digital bookstore this summer, and it may include DRM-free e-books from other publishers too. Meanwhile, distributor IPG announced that it will give client publishers the option to sell e-books DRM-free, and Kobo will give authors the option to sell DRM-free through its new self-publishing platform Writing Life. Still, publishers are moving slowly and it looks as though changes are going to happen in trickles.

Penguin global digital director Molly Barton said at Pub Launch that “Penguin is interested in methods of file security that would allow greater interoperability between platforms,” but Random House president of sales, operations and digital Madeline McIntosh called the DRM discussion “a red herring in a publishers panel at the IDPF conference, Publishers Lunch reports (paywall). She noted DRM’s not the only thing that keeps readers using a particular digital bookstore’s platform: “We have to be clear about what the goal is and commercial reason [to remove DRM].”

Self-publishing, part II: It’s getting closer

“We saw that seven percent of the units sold [on Kobo] were coming from self-published authors,” Kobo EVP of content and merchandising Michael Tamblyn told me, making those authors “collectively the size of a major publishing house,” so we “wanted to get closer” to them. Thus the launch of Kobo’s new self-publishing platform Writing Life. Authors using it get a 70 percent royalty on e-books priced between $1.99 and $12.99 and a 45 percent royalty on books below $1.99 or above $12.99. By “looking at how e-books sell in general,” Tamblyn said, “we know that after $12.99 there’s a drop…and after that it’s difficult to generate significant demand.” So the royalty structure “encourages authors to stay within that space.”

Amazon took up a lot of floor space, with separate sections for Amazon Publishing and self-publishing platforms Kindle Direct Publishing and CreateSpace. At KDP, the company set up rows of chairs and, all day long, self-published authors gave presentations on why they use KDP. “I also sell on Nook [Barnes & Noble's self-publishing platform is PubIt],” I heard one author say, but Barnes & Noble doesn’t rent a public booth at BEA — which seems kinda dumb considering both Amazon and Kobo’s emphases on self-publishing at the show. Kobo, too, had the self-published authors participating in the beta launch of Writing Life speaking at its booth.

Startups: Maybe we’ll find a better way next year

The Javits Center’s vastness makes it tough for publishers and startups to randomly encounter each other, a lame “Digital Discovery Zone” is removed from the rest of the floor, and terrible or nonexistent WiFi prohibits quick demos or many interactions you need the Internet for. (Can I throw in one more complaint? There’s no WiFi in the press office and the woman who runs it yelled at me for “drinking all the water.”) The founder of one fairly well-known startup told me he was finding it tough to meet with the publishers who could get use out of his product. Despite a few panels that try to bring traditional publishers and newer companies together, BookExpo America remains, primarily, an event where publishers and authors pitch new books to librarians and booksellers. Maybe that’s what it should be, but since it’s also the largest book industry event in the United States, it’s not surprising that digital companies arrive with expectations about who they’ll meet and leave wanting more. It seems as if there should be a more efficient way to make these meetings happen — stay tuned on that.

Don’t hold your book party on a rowboat

OK, this one’s not digital. Author Robert Sullivan took BEA-going booksellers to the Hudson to promote his upcoming book “My American Revolution,” which is about the historical importance of New York Waterways. As the New York Times reports, “two rowboats – built at the boathouse to imitate 19th-century New York Harbor craft known as Whitehall gigs – left the pier loaded with booksellers, volunteer coxswains and local residents.” Unfortunately, one of the boats “struck a pier” and flipped, “dumping three BookExpo conventioneers, two instructors and two others into 60-degree water.” Five were able to climb onto the pier. “The other two drifted 100 yards away.” There were no fatalities.

See also

Social reading, discoverability and other unsolved problems at BEA 2012

Kobo launches e-book self-publishing platform, Writing Life

Macmillan’s Tor/Forge will launch DRM-free digital bookstore this summer

Wattpad raises $17 million to become the YouTube of writing

Photo courtesy of BEA