Library Stuff

“The American Booksellers Association, which represents U.S. independent bookstores, has objected to the U.S. government’s proposed settlement of its price-fixing lawsuit against top publishers, saying it would strengthen Amazon.com Inc’s dominance. The association, in a letter to the U.S. Justice Department dated June 14, said the settlement would create “a significant danger that Amazon will again regain a monopoly share in the sale of e-books.”

via Reuters

Amazon.com – “Owning a Kindle just got a whole lot better for magic-loving Muggles. Starting June 19, Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) is adding all seven Harry Potter books (in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish) to the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL). Harry Potter is the all-time best-selling book series in history, and Amazon has purchased an exclusive license from J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore to make the addition of these titles possible. The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library is a benefit of Amazon Prime membership—Prime members also enjoy free two-day shipping on millions of items and unlimited streaming of more than 17,000 movies and TV episodes. The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library has now grown to over 145,000 books that can be borrowed for free as frequently as once a month, with no due dates.”

LifeHacker – “Sorting through the Amazon store for free ebooks can be a bit of a mess. To simplify the process Zero Dollar Books is a simple webapp that aggregates all the best selling free ebooks and shows them off in a nice clean view.”

The Atlantic – “To identify the most electronically literate places in America, we analyzed the Priceonomics database of eight million electronics for sale by city. We examined how prevalent the Amazon Kindle was by city to rank how popular e-reading was across the nation (we also examined Nook sales, which didn’t change the results). To our surprise, the most populous and culturally-reputed cities in America did not rank among the most digitally literate.”

Press Release – “Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Ian Fleming Publications Ltd today announced that Amazon Publishing has acquired a ten-year license for North American rights to the entire list of James Bond books by Ian Fleming in print and ebook. Along with the iconic series, Fleming’s two works of non-fiction, consisting of a collection of travel writings called Thrilling Cities (1963) and an expose of the illegal precious stones trade entitled The Diamond Smugglers (1957), are also included in the agreement. Jonny Geller, Managing Director at Curtis Brown, negotiated the agreement. All of the titles will be reissued by Amazon Publishing’s Thomas & Mercer imprint beginning in summer 2012.”

LA Times – “Amazon.com is big. It’s a huge online seller of everything, and in the world of publishing it looms particularly large. It’s credited with changing the way people buy books — online! and cheaper! And it also is handed the blame for the crumbling of brick-and-mortar bookstores, including the once-powerful, now-defunct national chain Borders. And Amazon often has an interesting story to tell. E-books went mainstream with the push of Amazon’s Kindle. The online bookseller’s experimentation with many aspects of digital media has led the field, including e-book sharing, e-book payment rubrics, sharing sales information directly with authors, e-book bestseller lists, and independent, Kindle-only e-book publishing.”

Teleread – “Amazon just issued a press release announcing the opening of their Kindle Textbooks store. Titles will be available to rent for periods from 30 days to 360 days, and students can increase the rental period in increments as small as one day, or purchase (license) the book outright at any point. The other compelling feature is that any notes or highlights will remain stored on Amazon’s servers under the customer’s Kindle account, just like other notes and highlights, so that they’ll remain accessible even after the rental expires.”

Bnet – “Amazon may be capriciously banning Kindle erotica, but it will want to be careful before it pisses off its main customers: sexy-book readers. According to a new study, the average e-book “power buyer” is a 44-year-old female purchasing romance/erotica books. Kick out all erotica and Amazon is virtually handing them to Barnes & Noble’s nook.”

CNET – “Amazon has spoken with some of the major record companies and Hollywood film studios about creating a digital locker service for their film and music libraries and could announce the plans as early as next week, sources told CNET. Sources from both the film and music industries said Amazon is working on creating a cloud locker service that would enable users to store their existing music, film, and book collections, even content not purchased at Amazon, on the company’s servers.”

ACLU – “The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of North Carolina today sent a letter to North Carolina Secretary of Revenue Kenneth Lay reiterating concern over a recent request by the state Department of Revenue (NCDOR) for the private records of Amazon.com customers. The letter informs Lay that the ACLU will take legal action on behalf of North Carolina residents who are Amazon.com customers if NCDOR persists in its demand for their constitutionally protected private information. Specifically, the letter says the ACLU and its clients will intervene in an existing lawsuit brought by Amazon.com to stop NCDOR from collecting individually identifiable information that could be linked to specific purchases made on Amazon.com.”

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