Amazon announces KDP Select for Kindle e-book exclusives

Amazon has announced KDP Select, a program that will use a new funding scheme to compensate authors who make their e-books exclusive to Amazon Kindle for at least 90 days.

The company has announced that in the first year, it expects to put $6 million into a fund that will be paid out to authors when their exclusive e-books are checked out of Amazon’s Kindle Lending Library. The authors will receive a share of the fund calculated by the proportion their books were borrowed compared to the number of borrows overall.

While this pays authors a fee for borrowed e-books, something they haven’t previously been compensated for before, it is unusual to not offer compensation to authors directly for their work. How much an author earns will depend on how much the other authors in the program earn, and the more J. Carson Black earns, the less J.A. Konrath will get.

The participating authors are all part of the Kindle Direct Publishing program. Mystery writers Black, Konrath, Gemma Halliday, and J.R. Rain; thriller writers C.J. Lyons and Scott Nicholson; romance novelists Julie Ortolon, Teresa Ragan and Patricia Ryan; and science fiction author B.V. Larson have signed on.

Amazon’s press release included several statements by authors lauding the program.

“My choice to participate in KDP Select and the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library was easy,” said best-selling thriller writer Blake Crouch. “The Kindle Store is simply the best, most effective store in the world for selling independent e-books, and there is no greater champion for independent writers than Amazon.”

“I'm thrilled to be offering my e-books to Amazon’s Kindle Owners’ Lending Library through KDP Select,” said Lyons, No. 1 best-selling Kindle author of “Borrowed Time.” “I look forward to reaching new readers who enjoy my style of ‘Thrillers with Heart.’”

“I chose to participate in KDP Select because it’s an innovative way to get my e-books in the hands of readers who are new to my work,” said best-selling historical mystery and romance writer Ryan. “If they like what they read, they’ll most likely put me on their to-buy list, and maybe even recommend me to their friends.”

“KDP Select and the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library are a boon to readers and authors,” said Konrath, author of the best-selling Jack Daniels mystery series.  “Reading e-books for free?  Sign me up!”

“As a KDP author, I’m delighted to participate in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library through KDP Select,” said Larson, best-selling science fiction and fantasy author.  “Amazon has again expanded the value of their Amazon Prime membership by including access to free e-books, and they have not forgotten their homegrown authors.”

“KDP Select is the best way I know to bring my Jake Lassiter series to a new generation of readers through the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library,” said Paul Levine, best-selling mystery and thriller writer. “Once again, Amazon leads the way!”

These authors will be guinea pigs in Amazon’s new e-book experiment. While their e-books are being made available to readers for free in this lending program, they remain for sale at Amazon. Will their sales decline? Will the share of a pool of money make up for the difference? Why offer a pool of money instead of paying authors a set rate?

Perhaps some of that will be known soon. The program has begun, with a planned $500,000 available in the pool for December.

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Image: Screen shot of Amazon's Kindle Lending Library.

EU looks at e-book practices of Apple and major publishers

The European Commission has launched an investigation over e-book practices in the EU by Apple, HarperCollins, Penguin, Hachette, Macmillan and Simon and Schuster. The commission hopes to determine whether the parties have engaged in anti-competitive sales practices using Apple's iBookstore.

In a statement about the investigation, the commission wrote:

The Commission will in particular investigate whether these publishing groups and Apple have engaged in illegal agreements or practices that would have the object or the effect of restricting competition in the EU or in the EEA. The Commission is also examining the character and terms of the agency agreements entered into by the above named five publishers and retailers for the sale of e-books. The Commission has concerns, that these practices may breach EU antitrust rules that prohibit cartels and restrictive business practices (Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union – TFEU).

Attention is being turned to fixed price agreements between Apple and the publishing companies in the countries in the European Union. However, the Associated Press reports, "The commission stressed the probe is in its early stages and did not mean the companies actually broke EU competition law. It follows a similar investigation by the Office of Fair Trading in the U.K. and a class action lawsuit against the same five publishers and Apple filed this summer in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California."

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Steve Jobs biography is the top-selling book in the country

Walter Isaacson's biography "Steve Jobs" is the most popular book in the nation. According to reports, Neilsen BookScan shows that 379,000 copies have been sold.

Initially scheduled to be published in 2012 with the title "iSteve," plans for the book changed as Jobs' health was declining. Simon & Schuster changed the title and moved up the publication date. The book officially hit shelves on Oct. 24, less than three weeks after Jobs' death on Oct. 5.

"Fueled by intense interest in the late tech visionary's life and career," CNN writes, "the biography arrived on a wave of publicity, including appearances by Isaacson on CBS's '60 Minutes' and CNN's 'Piers Morgan Tonight.'"

Sales of the Jobs biography are the largest of any single book since November 2010, the Bookseller reports. However, it didn't quite catch up to last year's big sellers, when George W. Bush's memoir, "Decision Points," and Jeff Kinney's "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth" both sold more than 430,000 copies.

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Photo: Copies of "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson at a Costco in Moutain View, Calif. Credit: Paul Sakuma / Associated Press

Mona Simpson's memorial to brother Steve Jobs

It was quietly known in the literary world that author Mona Simpson was Steve Jobs' sister. Her first novel, the bestselling "Anywhere but Here," led with the dedication, "For Joanne, our mother, and my brother Steve." Her 1996 novel "A Regular Guy" featured a character who, like Jobs, was a technology magnate.

"I'm always aware that people will look for parallels in real life, but I'm not writing autobiography," she told Salon in 1996. "Fiction confuses people because you know there's probably some little nuggets of the person's life jumbled up in their work, but you don't know what they are. Artists represent boundary-crossers in our society, so everybody's looking to them, hoping they're having great, dangerous experiences. But a lot of fiction writers have relatively boring lives, because they're living in other worlds half the time. I don't think I've ever revealed anything about my family in this or any of my books. There are no secrets exposed."

The siblings had an unusual story. Their American mother and Syrian-immigrant father were in a relationship, and she became pregnant. But facing resistance about their union, they gave up the baby for adoption. That was Steve. They eventually married and had another baby -- Mona -- and then split up. Mona came to know her brother only after she was contacted, at age 25, by an attorney.

That story, and the news of their relationship, is now widely known: It's in Simpson's moving eulogy for her older brother. She gave it at a service on Oct. 16, and it was printed in Sunday's N.Y. Times.

I want to tell you a few things I learned from Steve, during three distinct periods, over the 27 years I knew him. They’re not periods of years, but of states of being. His full life. His illness. His dying.

Steve worked at what he loved. He worked really hard. Every day.

That’s incredibly simple, but true....

Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times.

Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them.

Steve’s final words were:

OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.

The biography "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson remains at the top of Amazon's bestseller list.

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Left photo: Mona Simpson in Los Angeles. Credit Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times

Right photo: Steve Jobs in 2006. Credit: Paul Sakuma / Associated Press

RiverRun Bookstore in New Hampshire needs a lifeline

RiverRun Bookstore in Portsmouth, N.H., will be leaving its location when its lease is up at the end of 2011. Owner Tom Holbrook has emailed customers saying that in order to survive, the store will need to find a less-expensive location; it could also use some new investors.

When we moved into this space five years ago business was booming, the economy was good, and the Kindle didn't exist yet.

Fast forward to 2011 and we simply cannot afford the most expensive real estate in the most expensive city in New Hampshire.  The world of books is a beautiful one, but a shrinking one. We just can't stay here.

The rise of digital books, the poor economy, and some very large debts have left the store in a terrible position.  We've hung on by our fingernails for the last two years hoping things would improve, but they haven't.

For that reason, for RiverRun to survive we must not only find a new location, but we also need to re-capitalize the store.  Much of our trouble started in 2007 when I took a large loan to buy out my business partners, so I am now more than willing to take on new partners, if there is anyone out there foolish enough to be interested.

RiverRun Bookstore became more than just a neighborhood bookstore thanks largely to the tireless Internet efforts of Michele Filgate, events coordinator and avid tweeter. When I was in Portsmouth in 2009, I made it a point to stop in at RiverRun -- I didn't catch Filgate, but I found a lovely space with bright new wood floors, handsome displays and a comfortable layout.

Filgate has moved on -- she's now at McNally Jackson Books in New York -- and RiverRun Bookstore doesn't have quite the same Internet presence. But it appears that what it needs more than Internet support are local readers who can come in on a day-to-day basis and buy books. In addition to a new and cheaper location, that is.

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Photo: RiverRun Bookstore. Credit: RiverRun Bookstore

Microsoft's Bill Gates turns to book reviewing

Billionaire Bill Gates, who remains chairman and chief software architect of his company, Microsoft, has put his talents to book reviewing. On Wednesday, he posted his review of "Prime Movers of Globalization: The History and Impact of Diesel Engines and Gas Turbines" by Vaclac Smil (MIT University Press) on his personal website, Gates Notes:

As a history buff, I appreciate books that give you a sense of the people behind important inventions and the sweeping impact they have had on society. Often -– as in the case of the diesel engine and the gas turbine -– incremental advances obscure the profound impact of technology. In Prime Movers, Smil focuses in on a slice of 20th century technological innovation and shows the phenomenal impact it has had on international trade and travel.

To put the significance of the diesel engine and the gas turbine in perspective, Smil points out that until coal-powered steam engines came along a few hundred years ago, animals and human muscle were the “prime movers” of manufacturing, and wind and sails the prime movers of international travel and trade. The steam engine was an important underpinning of the industrial revolution. But its impact pales in comparison to the diesel engine and the gas turbine. ...

There are a lot of fascinating historical points and statistics in Smil’s book that make it an interesting read, but what most fascinated me was learning about the incredible impact these two innovations have had on so many aspects of our lives.

It turns out that Gates has been reviewing books on the site every few weeks since March. His recent reads include "Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools" by Steven Brill, "Getting Better: Why Global Development is Succeeding" by Charles Kenny, and "Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation" by Steven Johnson.

His first posted book review was back in February 2010, of Steven Levitt's and Stephen Dubner's "SuperFreakonomics"; frankly, it wasn't much. "I had a chance to read a prepublication copy of SuperFreakonomics before it was officially released," it began. "I really liked Freakonomics and I think SuperFreakonomics is even better." If one of my freshman writing students had turned that in, it wouldn't have gotten a B-minus.

Since then, Gates has much improved as a book reviewer. He often uses a personal take, explaining why he's interested in this topic, and sometimes comes with a critical eye. He picked up Johnson's book "with a little bit of skepticism," he wrote. "Lots of books have been written about innovation -– what it is, the most innovative companies, how you measure it. The subject can seem a little faddish," he said, but he found Johnson's book to be a cut above.

Most of the books Gates writes about fall into the line with his philanthropic pursuits with the Gates Foundation: education, healthcare, technology and the underlying processes affecting those systems. It makes sense that he's reading about them -- but few billionaires take the time to write up their thoughts and share them as a book reviews.

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Photo: Bill Gates, left, with Warren Buffett in 2007. Credit: Nati Harnik / Associated Press

Barnes & Noble CFO Joseph Lombardi resigns

Barnes & Noble Chief Financial Officer Joseph Lombardi resigned Friday. Lomarbdi, 49, has been with the bookseller since 2003 and signed a three-year contract in 2010, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The Journal described his departure as happening "abruptly," adding that it is "opening a hole in the bookseller's executive ranks at a critical time."

After the dissolution of Borders, Barnes & Noble is the last national brick-and-mortar bookselling chain standing. It has faced its own financial struggles, having put itself up for sale and accepting a major investment from Liberty Media this year. However, with Chairman Leonard Riggio in charge since the 1970s, it has had one thing that Borders didn't: continuity of leadership.

How deeply Lombardi's departure may affect the company remains to be seen. He has said he will stay on into 2012, until a replacement is found.

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The Steve Jobs bio: Coming right up

The official biography of Steve Jobs will be out next week. The publication date, originally slated for 2012, was moved up -- but "Steve Jobs" the book did not reach shelves before Jobs died of cancer on Oct. 5.

The Apple founder had been working with biographer Walter Isaacson since at least 2009; friends and family had cooperated with the author to tell Jobs' story. Isaacson appears on "60 Minutes" on Sunday, where he'll talk about the book and his process. In one clip Isaacson says that Jobs' decision to try alternative treatments may have been a mistake. Our Technology blog reports:

According to Isaacson, Jobs had a "very slow-growing" type of pancreatic cancer "that can actually be cured," but still opted not to get the surgery until nine months had gone by and it may have been too late.

"I've asked him" why he didn't get the operation, Isaacson told Steve Kroft of "60 Minutes." "And he said, 'I didn't want my body to be opened. … I didn't want to be violated in that way.' I think that he kind of felt that if you ignore something, if you don't want something to exist, you can have magical thinking. It'd work[ed] for him in the past.  He'd regret it."

More bits and pieces of the book are finding their way into the public eye. The Associated Press reports that Jobs ranted about a Google Android phone that he thought was too close to Apple's.

Apple sued, and Jobs told Isaacson in an expletive-laced rant that Google’s actions amounted to “grand theft.”

“I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” Jobs said. “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”

In the wake of Jobs' death, his insight, wisdom and vision have been well-remembered. Above, he gives a smart and thoughtful commencement address to Stanford students in 2005. But the "thermonuclear" comment shows Jobs was also a very driven businessman; it looks like Isaacson, who has also written biographies of Henry Kissinger and Albert Einstein, may have captured a full picture of him.

"Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson remains the No. 1-selling book at Amazon. It's been in the top 10 for 42 days.

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Steve Jobs bio tops Amazon bestseller list

After the death Wednesday of Apple founder and visionary Steve Jobs , his authorized biography became a hot ticket. "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson is Amazon's #1 bestselling book -- and it's not even out yet.

Although Jobs has been written about before, the biography is the first written with his cooperation. Jobs' biographer, Walter Isaacson, had been working with the Apple CEO, his family, friends, colleagues and competitors since at least 2009.

Isaacson has written biographies of genius Albert Einstein ("Einstein: His Life and Universe"), founding father Ben Franklin ("Benjamin Franklin: An American Life") and powerful diplomat Henry Kissinger ("Kissinger: A Biography"). When Simon & Schuster announced that the book was on the way, publisher Jonathan Karp said, "This is the perfect match of subject and author, and it is certain to be a landmark book about one of the world's greatest innovators."

The Steve Jobs biography was originally slated to be published in March 2012, and it was going to be titled "iSteve." The title was changed to the more staid "Steve Jobs," and the publishing date, at one point, moved up to Nov. 21, 2011. This week, it was moved up again, to less than three weeks from now: "Steve Jobs" will be released Oct. 24.

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Photo: Steve Jobs at the new iPad 2 product launch, March 2, 2011. Credit: Jeff Chiu / Associated Press. Book cover: Simon & Schuster

Amazon cuts deal on California sales taxes, drops ballot fight

A tentative deal with California legislators would buy Amazon another year of doing business in the state tax-free. The state Legislature had passed a law forcing Amazon to collect sales taxes in the state, which the company was planning to fight with a statewide ballot measure for which it had been collecting signatures.

The Times reports that Amazon plans to drop its efforts to launch the ballot referendum.

Under the deal, Amazon would delay collecting taxes until September 2012, Assemblyman Charles Calderon (D-Whittier) said. The new law had mandated that Internet retailers start collecting state taxes in July if they had offices, workers or other connections in California.

Amazon had refused to collect the taxes and poured $5 million into collecting signatures for a ballot referendum challenging the law.

If Congress acts by next summer to settle the contentious issue of how online retailers should be taxed, that decision would override Amazon's deal with California.

"It's a safe harbor for up to a year," Calderon said of the agreement he helped strike. "If they can't get Congress to act by next July, then they will start to collect the tax in September 2012. If by chance they get Congress to act, then that would trump the state law."

Gov. Jerry Brown, who supported the legislation requiring Amazon to collect taxes, has not yet shared his stance on the deal.

Amazon's measures to fight the California law included dropping its California associates and collecting signatures to put a measure on the ballot. Those signature-gatherers had been spotted outside at least one Los Angeles bookstore.

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Photo: Scott Eells / Bloomberg News