

The Diesel eBook store has been around since 2004 selling ebooks directly to the public. This was way before eBooks have became very trendy and before they had the great system to process orders they have today. In the past Diesel mainly just sold books through 3rd party type of system, no more. Today Diesel and Macmillan publishing signed a deal so Macmillan books will be directly for sale on the website now.
The Diesel website and Macmillan have been talking about this deal for awhile now and it was only with the advent of Adobe Content Server 4 to handle encryption and orders. Diesel also has developed a new proprietary interface for Macmillan called PubDesk. This is a GUI that Macmillan will access to access its inventory, modify metadata and track analytics on downloads, purchases and views.
Diesels ebook store recently went under a tremendous face-lift in 2010 that introduced social elements, a better search engine and the ever popular ‘Deal of the Day.’ With the addition of video integration and new partnerships with Google and Smashwords, solidified the deal with Macmillan.
Diesel commented on the new deal earlier on today – “We are so thrilled to be working with the prestigious publisher Macmillan directly since they represent many top-notch authors that our customers love to read – authors such as Lora Leigh, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Lisa Kleypas, Robert Jordan, Orson Scott Card, Robert A. Heinlein and Jonathan Franzen, just to name a few.”
via PRWEB
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The new Android Market and reading your e-books on any device
ABI Research released a study on Friday which said the market for digital content will not be tied to the success or failure of any single gadget, despite the widespread misconception that a single tablet or e-reader could "win" the market.
Betanews' Tim Conneally adds that the study indicates that the market for digital content won't be tied to the success or failure of any single gadget, despite all the predictions of which tablet or e-reader will 'win' the market.
Google finally launched a "renewed" web-based Android Market that is integrated with a user's Google account, which lets the customer shop for apps, sending them to the various Android-powered devices linked to that account.
' Amazon's Kindle store was the first major shopping outlet to take such a step. Users can shop for Kindle-formatted e-books on Amazon.com, and push their purchases to their Kindle device, regardless of whether it's a dedicated e-paper reader or a software application. '
And that includes reading Kindle books just on a PC or a Mac, as well as reading Google Web eBooks via the Kindle's web browser.
Larry Fisher, research director of NextGen, ABI Research's emerging technologies research incubator, said, "The variety of applications that allow people to buy this digital content reassures them that they won't be tied to a single store--or device--for content." Well, with the possible exception of Apple's iBookStore books, as those can't be read on non-Apple devices currently.
With the new Web-based applications (Google's as well as Amazon's coming Kindle for Web), "developers can post bigger photos and even videos of their applications in action, and the browsing experience is superior to the native Android Market app."
Macmillan and Amazon pay Lost Royalties, and Macmillan increases author percentage
This is also being called "The Amazon Kindle Outage Adjustment, Locus Online reports.
' In a letter accompanying royalty statements, Macmillian CEO John Sargent told many authors they will receive 25% of net receipts in e-book royalties instead of the 15% most contracts called for, citing 25% as the emergent industry standard.
Macmillan will also pay royalties on sales “lost” when Amazon removed the “Buy Now” buttons on all books published by Macmillian during their contractual dispute over switching to the agency model. ...Amazon has agreed to split the expense with Macmillan. '
Kindle 3's (UK: Kindle 3's), DX Graphite
Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources. Top 100 free bestsellers.
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or highest-rated ones
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UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.
It’s right around the one year anniversary of the week that Amazon removed Macmillan books’ buy buttons in its snit-fit over the implementation of agency pricing, resulting in a lot of authors losing a week’s worth of royalties. And just in time to mark the anniversary, an interesting tidbit of information pops up on eReads.
Richard Curtis reports that in a cover letter attached to the latest Macmillan semi-annual royalty statements authors have received, Macmillan CEO John Sargent makes note of an interesting adjustment to author royalties. Feeling that authors shouldn’t have to suffer on account of a battle between Macmillan and Amazon, the publisher decided to estimate the amount of royalties authors would have earned during that week if Amazon hadn’t pulled the buy button, and add that into the statement—and Amazon “graciously” agreed to pay half. No hard feelings, eh?
But perhaps more interesting is the other tidbit in the letter, which Curtis doesn’t even deign to mention specifically. Sargent writes that since the publishing industry standard for electronic book royalty rates has settled on 25% of net receipts, and Macmillan is using that rate for all its new e-book contracts, the publisher has decided to adjust all its contracts’ e-book royalty rates upward to that amount going forward and retroactively to May 1, 2010. Thus, authors receiving the old rates (an escalating scale of 10%/12.5%/15% based on list price) received a nice little Groundhog’s Day present: six months’ worth of doubled (on average) e-book royalties, plus double e-book royalties into the future.
Even as I continue to find agency pricing obnoxious and anticompetitive (yes, John, “the consumer does in fact place a value higher than .99 on first release electronic books” if he is forced to), I have to say that these kinds of steps forward in channeling more money to authors are very laudable changes, and their effect will only grow as the e-book market itself grows over time. By reducing the publisher’s take to only 45% of list price of the book, it puts money that might otherwise have gone to printing and binding costs in the author’s pocket instead.
(Found via the E-Book Community mailing list.)