"revenue" entries

The Oprah Effect and the Kindle

Chris Nuttall from the Financial Times says Oprah Winfrey will likely "endorse" the Kindle on today's show: Amazon is featuring a trailer of her Friday show on its site with Oprah talking about her new "favourite gadget" which is "life changing for me." From a side-on view, the product she is talking about looks very [much] like a Kindle….

The Economic Value of Trust

Philip Meyer looks at the connection between consumer trust and publishers' viability. From the American Journalism Review: The best publishers have always known that trust has economic value. In "The Vanishing Newspaper," I reported that advertising rates increased by $3.25 per Standard Advertising Unit (SAU) for each one percentage point increase in the persons who said they believed what they…

Tracking Amazon's Dominance in the Book Industry

Morris Rosenthal says retail figures point to Amazon eclipsing Barnes & Nobles in U.S. book sales this year: The book selling wars that began four decades ago with the rise of the mall chains, followed by the growing power of the Barnes & Noble, Borders and BAM superstore chains, has been won by Amazon. Amazon sales are on track…

An On-Demand Night at the Opera

The Metropolitan Opera is letting its inner geek run free. Performances will soon be available as pay-per-stream feeds and subscription packages through The Met's Web site. From the New York Times: For $3.99 or $4.99 per streamed opera, users will have a six-hour window in which to listen to or watch a production, once it has started. A monthly…

Watch the YouTube Video, Buy the Product

YouTube's Content ID service, something we've covered in the past, gives publishers two options for handling unauthorized videos: the material can be removed from YouTube or it can be turned into advertising/revenue opportunities. An article in today's New York Times shows which option Google prefers — Content ID can now be used to associate "click-to-buy" links with video clips:…

News Roundup: Digging Around Amazon's Topaz Format, Twitter Novels, June Ebook Sales Up 87% Over '07

Digging Around Amazon's Topaz File Format Late Night Code is popping the hood on Topaz, that mysterious "other" file format used on the Kindle: Mobipocket files purchased from Amazon have an AZW extension (which presumably stands for Amazon Whispernet – the name of the Kindle wireless download service). Mobipocket files from other sources will have a MOBI or PRC…

June '08 Ebook Sales Up 87% Over June '07

Wholesale trade ebook sales accounted for $4.9 million in June '08, according to industry stats from the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). This is an 87 percent increase over June '07. Year-to-date ebook sales are up 43 percent over last year. Note: The AAP/IDPF stats aggregate information from 12-15 trade publishers and reflect…

Sports Illustrated Offers Ad Space through Web Bids

Sports Illustrated is using a Web-based bidding system to sell advertising across its online and offline properties. From Advertising Age Executives at the Time Inc. title, the first one to try an online auction, said the move was partly to recruit those advertisers that aren't in close touch with the sales force anyway. "There are many advertisers out there that…

Last.fm Cuts Artists in on Ad Revenue

Last.fm is sharing ad revenue with with bands through its new Artist Royalty Program. From Wired's Listening Post: Bands and labels that register (or already registered) will start accruing money into Last.fm accounts whenever their music is streamed from the site as of today [7/9/08]. The company already pays artists through rights organizations, including SoundExchange, but this new plan allows…

Books and Ebooks Will Find Their Place

Publishers Weekly editor Sara Nelson offers a measured, middle-of-the-road response to ebook worriers and enthusiastic analysts: … just as there are certain books you would rather listen to than read (and vice versa) and some movies you'll rush to the theater to see, there is room in the world for another way to enjoy written narrative. Put it another way:…