I came across several articles I thought might be of interest and thought I’d share them.I promise to be back to regular blogging next week. My brain has gone on vacation even if my body is still here, trying to function normally.

Booksellers refuse to carry New Harvest imprint books. A bit of background. Earlier an announcement was made by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt  that it had reached a licensing agreement with Amazon “to publish and distribute all adult titles from Amazon Publishing’s New York office under the newly created New Harvest imprint”. Now comes news that some brick and mortar bookstores, apparently including Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million, won’t carry these books. The reasons range from Amazon’s alleged predatory practices that these booksellers say have hard hit their businesses to the fact Amazon will be the sole e-book distributor of these titles to the fact Amazon manages not to pay taxes in some areas. Some of these booksellers absolutely won’t order or carry the books. Others will special order if asked.

Okay, I won’t go into my thoughts on how they are viewing Amazon as the big evil. I’ve been over that time and again. Yes, Amazon is competition for them, but they have other concerns they ought to be looking at as well. Nor should they forget that the real problems for small bookstores came with the influx of the big box bookstores like B&N. You can do a search on the blog for an expansion of these thoughts if you like.

But what gets me is how one of the booksellers says they feel sorry for the authors but — and I am paraphrasing here — this is an attempt to strike back at Amazon. Look, they can hate Amazon all they want, but if they think the book might bring customers into their store, why in the world aren’t they stocking it? Readers are very often impulse buyers. If I know you are carrying a book I’m interested in, especially if other stores in the area aren’t, I’m going to come to your store to look. That gets me through your door. I’m very likely to buy something while there. That’s especially true if your staff is friendly and knows their stock. So quit parroting the party line and think about what is best for your business and that is getting bodies through the door.

As for the argument that only Amazon will be selling the e-book, this is nothing new. There are titles that are unique to B&N just as there are titles that are unique to Amazon.

For those of you who are following the Department of Justice’s price collusion suit against Apple et al, here is the litigation schedule. Long story short, unless negotiations move forward (and no one is thinking they really will at this point), we should see the trial starting in 2014 in all likelihood. Who knows where the e-book market will be by then. Of course, we are still waiting to hear what the court will do about the proposed judgment accepted by three of the named defendants. Here is a companion piece to the schedule.

Here’s an interesting article about what the global e-book market might look like in the future. As for the U.S., there are predictions that 50% of the trade book market will be e-books by 2016.

I’ve written several times about how libraries face increasing difficulties in lending e-books. Between several major publishers not allowing lending and others pricing e-books for libraries at a much higher price than physical books and another publisher limiting the number of times an e-book can be loaned before a new license is required (in the low 20s), library budgets are being hard hit. Now there’s this article pointing out how libraries are now concerned that their ability to lend physical books is in jeopardy. While this particular case is centered on books published outside of the US, it does bring up an interesting question. As publishers fight to hold onto their rights and further limit the rights of those who buy books — whether those books are digital, audio or hard copy — how will that affect our libraries? I will be honest, I’ve been waiting for some publisher to start backing out of library programs using the same argument they have about not allowing e-book lending — that allowing someone to walk into a library and borrow a book is costing the publisher sales. But that’s just me being my own cynical self.

Finally, for those who want to self-publish and then give away their book, you have a new outlet. I haven’t read all the way through the site yet, but Project Gutenberg now offers a self-publishing portal. According to the site, it will offer authors “ the free Author’s Community Cloud Library, a social network Self Publishing Portal.  This portal allows authors to share their works with our readers as well as allows readers to provide comments, reviews and feedback to the authors.”

What do you think about the links above and do you have any to share?