French Senate Approves a Bill to Stop Retailers Offering Free Home Delivery (GoodeReader)
This no doubt will hit Amazon’s French operations hard where the retailer has been doling out discounts as well as the bait of free home delivery to lure buyers.
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How Hybrid Publishers Innovate to Succeed (Forbes)
The publishing industry has been challenged by the online sales success of Amazon, the rise of eBooks, print-on-demand and most recently by self-publishing.
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Digital Publishing: The Expert’s View of What’s Next (The Guardian)
I predict more digital for publishers in 2014. I’m not being (completely) facetious, I mean more digitalness in all parts of the industry, not just in ebook product output.
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Authors Prefer Traditional Publishing to Self-Publishing. Surprised? (LA Times)
Writers prefer to be published by a traditional publisher over self-publishing. Go figure.
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Kindle Daily Deals: More Than 500 Educational Books (and others)
So, the government prohibits “free” home delivery? OK, from now on, the delivery charge will be 5 centimes per book.
When they change the law to require that online merchants charge the “full cost of delivery” reduce the price of the book so that the total price (book + delivery) remains the same.
When they change the law so that online merchants can’t discount the price of the books and must charge the full cost of delivery, ask online book buyers to identify a local charity and promise to contribute 10 percent of the cost (book plus delivery) to the customer’s specified charity.
There are so many ways around this law, and any other possible law, that it is just not worth worrying about. The French senate might as well stand on a beach and order the tide not to come in.