From The Bookseller:

Publishers have no grounds for complacency as the second, third and fourth waves of digital change are about to hit the business, delegates heard at a Westminster Media Forum on publishing 2013, held this week.

Mark Oliver, chief executive of media strategy company Oliver & Ohlbaum Associates, insisted that disruption was speeding up rather than slowing down. He said: “We have heard today the argument that the worst is over—making the case for complacency.

We’ve heard about people feeling that online sales have topped out, or e-books sales are topping out, and that piracy is not causing a lot of damage, that booksellers have been hit hard but publishers are doing better, wholesale prices are holding up and self-published authors are a cheap area of R&D . . . I don’t buy this. This was just the first wave of change, and the second one is about to hit. Self-publishing is about to build real challenges. Subscription models will gain in popularity. As public libraries move into e-lending, it will be hugely problematic, and piracy will grow in response to proprietary DRM.”

Link to the rest at The Bookseller

PG tried to think of a technology disruption that stopped part-way through. He was unsuccessful.

From The Scroll:

Steimatzky, the iconic Israeli bookstore chain founded in 1925, has issued a series of images of readers asleep in bed with their books… and the fictional—or non-fictional—protagonists of said books. . . . Each image in the series is accompanied by the caption, “With the right book, you’re never alone.”

. . . .

Link to the rest at The Scroll and thanks to Meryl for the tip.

The image above is Pippi Longstocking.

From The Ottawa Business Journal:

Kobo and Kindle have grown to become familiar brands in Canada but ebook sales now appear to plateauing, suggests a report by the industry organization BookNet Canada.

. . . .

Based on surveys with 4,000 book-buying consumers, BookNet Canada pegged paperback sales in 2012 at about 58 per cent of the market, while hardcovers accounted for 24 per cent and e-book sales made up 15 per cent.

BookNet Canada president and CEO Noah Genner says early sales data from this year shows e-book sales are steady and no longer growing.

. . . .

The report found most consumers still preferred to buy their books in stores rather than shopping online.

Link to the rest at Ottawa Business Journal

PG can’t remember if there were news stories saying MP3 sales had plateaued and that most consumers preferred to purchase their CD’s in music stores.

From The Bookseller:

Waterstones has begun a company-wide consultation with around 560 management-level staff as it prepares for a restructure set to put more emphasis on traditional shop floor bookselling.

Staff were told last night (20th May) in an email communication from Waterstones managing director James Daunt that those holding the positions of branch manager, assistant manager, general manager and deputy manager will enter into a consultation before the company restructures and those roles are abolished. A new “bookshop manager” role will be created instead to encompass those positions, which will “call on different skills”, he said.

It is not clear how many members of staff will leave the company.

. . . .

The consultation move follows a restructure of the regional management level of Waterstones in February, which saw seven regional and divisional management roles made redundant as a new “leaner” structure was unveiled.

. . . .

“The context, however, is the current unforgiving bookselling environment. We may be running better bookshops, and running these in a very different manner to before, but we have yet to recognise this in our management structure. If we are to secure the future of Waterstones, we must take the difficult step to do so.”

Daunt also said its website offering to customers was “subject to fundamental review”, with work currently underway to revamp it.

Link to the rest at The Bookseller

From BGR:

European governments are casting a baleful eye on the explosive smartphone and tablet growth. The problem for many Europeans lies in the way these devices promote vehicles for American entertainment — from Amazon and Netflix to Apple and Disney. The new proposalmade by the president of France would slap a 1% tax on all smartphone and tablet retail sales, with a goal to protect “l’exception culturelle”. This exception is a concept France created in 1992 to defend protectionist measures aimed at preserving the cultural heritage of France.

Sweden is taking a different tack; it has already extended its annual, $320 television tax to encompass consumers who do not own a television, but possess a smartphone or a tablet.

. . . .

Both the French and the Swedish policies are underpinned by fear. There is a new horror of cultural imperialism pervading Europe: Netflix is expanding aggressively, Amazon is on a rampage, iTunes is bringing a wide selection of American television and film content to the heartlands of the European Union. In many European countries, the limited selection of American entertainment content by national broadcasters used to cap the amount of American entertainment consumed by innocent Europeans.

Link to the rest at BGR

From Global Times:

Ebooks might be convenient, but they come at a cost. The spread of ebooks has driven circulation down in China’s university libraries, and even caused some librarians to lose their jobs.

. . . .

Hankou’s library is now lending 68,000 less books a year compared to 2010. But ebook access at a nearby school has increased from 356 to 44,556 since 2009.

Link to the rest at Global Times

From Reuters:

German labour union Verdi called on workers at Amazon.com to stage a strike in the country on Tuesday to put pressure on the global internet retailer to improve pay and benefits.

Amazon employs around 9,000 people in Germany and has come under fire from trade union Verdi for refusing to implement a collective agreement on employment conditions, similar to other mail order and retail firms.

Link to the rest at Reuters

From Good Ereader:

Barnes and Noble e-readers have seen unprecedented demand in the UK with the recent price drop. Blackwell’s, Sainsburys, Asda, and Foyles shops are all reporting that the Nook Simple Touch is sold out in almost all retail locations. This is one of the first times in the entire history of Barnes and Noble that the company has seen such elevated levels of demand. Even the main B&N website is showing the e-reader as “Sold Out.”

The main reason the Nook Simple Touch is seeing critical success is due to the dramatic price drop. Last week, Barnes & Noble slashed the price of its original Nook Model from £79 to £29 in a bid to win market share in the UK.  Not only has the discounted Simple Touch seen success with the price drop, but the brand name is at record levels of [visibility].

Link to the rest at Good Ereader

From Publishing Perspectives:

Xihinanet.com reports that over 80% of the people in China have read books online, but large numbers of them are not satisfied with the quality of literature being offered, according to an online survey by the China Youth Daily.

Some 88.8 percent of respondents said that they have read novels online, while 23.6% said that they were frequent readers.

. . . .

[O]nly 20% of those surveyed said that they were satisfied with the quality of books available online, and more than 30% said that they believed that most online novels were not “top quality” but were inferior pieces of work.

Link to the rest at Publishing Perspectives

From The Telegraph:

Renowned author Dan Brown woke up in his luxurious four-poster bed in his expensive $10 million house – and immediately he felt angry. Most people would have thought that the 48-year-old man had no reason to be angry. After all, the famous writer had a new book coming out. But that was the problem. A new book meant an inevitable attack on the rich novelist by the wealthy wordsmith’s fiercest foes. The critics.

Renowned author Dan Brown hated the critics. Ever since he had become one of the world’s top renowned authors they had made fun of him. They had mocked bestselling book The Da Vinci Code, successful novel Digital Fortress, popular tome Deception Point, money-spinning volume Angels & Demons and chart-topping work of narrative fiction The Lost Symbol.

The critics said his writing was clumsy, ungrammatical, repetitive and repetitive. They said it was full of unnecessary tautology. They said his prose was swamped in a sea of mixed metaphors. For some reason they found something funny in sentences such as “His eyes went white, like a shark about to attack.” They even say my books are packed with banal and superfluous description, thought the 5ft 9in man. He particularly hated it when they said his imagery was nonsensical. It made his insect eyes flash like a rocket.

. . . .

“Hello agent John, it’s client Dan,” commented the pecunious scribbler. “I’m worried about new book Inferno. I think critics are going to say it’s badly written.”

The voice at the other end of the line gave a sigh, like a mighty oak toppling into a great river, or something else that didn’t sound like a sigh if you gave it a moment’s thought. “Who cares what the stupid critics say?” advised the literary agent. “They’re just snobs. You have millions of fans.”

That’s true, mused the accomplished composer of thrillers that combined religion, high culture and conspiracy theories. His books were read by everyone from renowned politician President Obama to renowned musician Britney Spears. It was said that a copy of The Da Vinci Codehad even found its way into the hands of renowned monarch the Queen. He was grateful for his good fortune, and gave thanks every night in his prayers to renowned deity God.

“Think of all the money you’ve made,” recommended the literary agent. That was true too. The thriving ink-slinger’s wealth had allowed him to indulge his passion for great art. Among his proudest purchases were a specially commissioned landscape by acclaimed painter Vincent van Gogh and a signed first edition by revered scriptwriter William Shakespeare.

Link to the rest at The Telegraph and thanks to Robert for the tip.