Notes in the Margin Weblog

Publishers Weekly is reporting that publisher Random House doubled its profits in the first half of 2010 because of two main factors:

• Stieg Larsson’s massively successful trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest): “Random has sold a combined 6.5 copies in the U.S. and Germany of his three books in print, e-book, and audio formats.”
• “a 300% increase in digital sales.”

Random House chairman Markus Dohle announced that the company is on track to generate ebook sales of over $100 million, mostly in the United States.

In other ebook news, Publishers Weekly also reports that Sony is releasing

a redesigned and upgraded suite of its three digital readers—the 5”screen Pocket Edition; 6” screen Touch Edition and 7”screen Daily Edition—offering full optical touch screen functionality, nonglare black & white e-ink display along with reduced size and weight. The new devices are not only stylish—they come in silver, black and pink aluminum skins—but also offer stepped up power, crisp page-turning and increased storage capacity. Only one model, the top of the line Daily Edition, offers 3G/wireless. The Pocket and Touch Editions will be available beginning today; the Daily Edition in November.

In a final bit of news, Amazon’s Kindle, already available in select Target stores, will be available in Staples stores this fall.

Making the Case for iPad E-Book Prices – NYTimes.com:

For those of us whose heads are still spinning from trying to understand all the hoopla, both philosophical and financial, over pricing and distribution of ebooks, this article gets to the dollars and sense of the matter.

For example, on a hardcover book priced at $26, “the publisher is left with $4.05, out of which it must pay overhead for editors, cover art designers, office space and electricity before taking a profit.” For a $12.99 ebook, the publisher is left “with something ranging from $4.56 to $5.54, before paying overhead costs or writing off unearned advances.”

In fact, the industry is based on the understanding that as much as 70 percent of the books published will make little or no money at all for the publisher once costs are paid.

Some of these books are by writers who are experimenting with form or genre, or those who just do not have recognizable names. “You’re less apt to take a chance on an important first novel if you don’t have the profit margin on the volume of the big books,” said Lindy Hess, director of the Columbia Publishing Course, a program that trains young aspirants for jobs in the publishing industry. “The truth about this business is that, with rare exceptions, nobody makes a great deal of money.”

All of this explains, if nothing else, why publishers are no longer spending the money for copy editors to clean up all those annoying little errors that have become so prevalent in printed books.

Devices to Take Textbooks Beyond Text

A lot of the talk about digital reading devices has centered around their usefulness for textbook-toting students. Although the ability to carry a lot of hefty textbooks around on one much smaller device is a big plus, the drawback has been that the monochrome screens of current ereaders don’t allow for presentation of material that involves more than just text (i.e., illustrations, figures, tables). But, according to this article, all that may be changing:

Now there is a new approach that may adapt well to textbook pages: two-screen e-book readers with a traditional e-paper display on one screen and a liquid-crystal display on the other to render graphics like science animations in color.

Expect news of these new devices in January and February 2010 to compete with Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, and the Sony Reader.

Not Yet the Season for a Nook

David Pogue, technology writer for the New York Times, reviews the Nook, which he says is astonishingly similar to the Amazon Kindle. He calls the Nook’s missing features “symptoms of B&N’s bad case of Ship-at-All-Costs-itis. But the biggest one of all is the Nook’s half-baked software.”

How E-Books Will Change Reading And Writing

The Kindle and other electronic reading devices have already started to make their mark, but they may begin to change the very words authors commit to posterity. Lynn Neary talks to Rick Moody, Lev Grossman and Nicholas Carr about the way these devices are shaping the publishing world.

From NPR.

Related Posts:

• Choosing the Small Screen of a Smartphone for E-Reading
• Big News in Ebooks

Here’s a run-down of some of the latest news in the continuing ebook wars:

E-Book Fans Keep Format in Spotlight: From The New York Times.

Nook from Barnes & Noble, available for preorder now.

Borders how has the Sony Reader available in several editions:

• Sony Reader Touch Edition

• Sony Reader Pocket Edition: available in silver, pink, and dark blue

A New Electronic Reader, the Nook, Enters the Market: The New York Times‘s take on the new ereader from Barnes & Noble.

Related Post: Nation’s Retailers Engage In Online Book Pricing War

Phones, PCs put e-book within reach of Kindle-less | csmonitor.com:

Thanks to Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle, e-book sales are finally zooming, after more than a decade in the doldrums.

But the pioneering device may not dominate the market for long. As Castaldo found, many phones are now sophisticated enough, and have good enough screens, to be used as e-book reading devices. In addition, e-book reading on computers is already surprisingly popular.