Celebrate Lover's Day with a Romantic Duo!

When you're in love, everyday is Lover's Day.

Sometimes people need a little incentive to express their love or to take a "leap," Valentine's Day is one such opportunity. Lover's Day is yet another chance at love. Some people get married on Lover's Day, others propose, or have a romantic dinner for two.

What do we do on Lover's Day? Because we love romance and readers, we want to give you a present for Lover's Day. In fact, we like you so much, one day isn't enough—we want to give you THREE DAYS of LOVE!

So, for the next three days, Tue 4/23 through Thur 4/25, we are giving away the bestselling kindle edition of The Distant Shore by award-winning author Mariam Kobras.

 

The Distant Shore is the first book in Mariam's Stone Trilogy, and here’s what her fans have to say:

~ Valerie Storey, 5 Stars, “Mariam Kobras has a real gift for description, and I loved the settings in particular; some of the passages read like poetry. Reading her book was the equivalent of taking a vacation—and to my mind that's the best kind of reading experience there is.”

~ Lauri Rottmayer, 5 stars, “Mariam Kobras has crafted a love story that you can really imagine. Her beautiful words create the images in your head drawing you into the story and the lives of the characters. I'm excited to read the next book!"

~Adele Adair, 5 stars, "Jon and Naomi's love story had me captivated and I was carried along on the roller coaster of their relationship. Her ability to set a scene transported me to Norway, New York and beyond. The journey she takes us on is not an easy one for her characters as they struggle to overcome years of separation and the differences in their lifestyles, hopes and dreams."

~Johanna Harness, 5 stars, "The set-up is straight-forward. Jonathan Stone, an aging rock star, still longs for the woman who walked out of his life years ago. His fan mail is usually screened, but this time his manager gives him a letter. "My mother's name is Naomi Carlsson," it begins. "We live in a small town in Norway called Halmar where she manages a hotel, the Seaside. She said you are my father." From there, the story tumbles out beautifully, structured with a sense of inevitability—and yet I still found myself surprised."

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE . . . 

We've also put the kindle edition of the second book in the Stone Trilogy, Under the Same Sun, on SALE for $3.99, 50% off. Yep, it's twice the love!

Both books are beautifully written, engaging stories, that will keep you turning the pages late into the night. Don't miss out on this LIMITED TIME OFFER! All good things have to come to an end so, even though we'll still love you on the 26th, this offer ends at midnight PDT on the 25th.

No kindle, NO PROBLEM, Amazon has an app for that. You can read these ebooks on your computer, smartphone, or tablet. Just click HERE and get reading!

Our prescription: Take two Kobras kindles with plenty of chocolate and unplug the phone!

 

New Book Stats Describe the Flat Trade In New Ways--Including $838 Million in 2010 eBooks

After a couple years of no industry-wide statistics and many years before that of poor, illusory numbers, the publishing industry is back on the road to measuring itself with the new BookStats, prepared jointly by the AAP and BISG, released in highlight form to trade media on Tuesday.
All of the new numbers as you will read about them are modeled estimates rather than actual data--but they draw on data supplied by just under 2,000 publishers, and the methodology for extrapolating the estimates was far more careful and rational than the process used by the BISG alone for its annual Book Trends numbers, and has introduced fewer errors of gross exaggeration-by-multiplication. (More on this later....) Book Trends was abandoned after publishing data for 2008, and the BISG did not compile any statistics for 2009. The AAP has published annual estimates though they were considered less complete. So the new data effort covers 2010 but also compiles industry numbers for 2009 and 2008 using the same new method.
In the headline numbers, BookStats estimates trade publishers' 2010 sales at $12.59 billion. That's a slight decline from $12.71 billion in 2009, when sales were 7.4 percent higher than the year before, which registered $11.83 billion in 2008.
(Here's our first point of divergence with some other accounts: we calculate trade sales as adult fiction, adult nonfiction and juvenile sales. BookStats has put the "religion" breakout inside trade in their general press release. There is some overlap, but with $1.35 billion in wholesale sales, we're more comfortable leaving "religion" outside of the trade basket.
(Here's our second point of divergence: the official BookStats press release celebrates all of the increases in publishing, some of which can only be derived by looking at changes over a two-year period, instead of the traditional year-over-year view. And 2008 was when the economy plunged in the final quarter, so it may make for a skewed baseline, particularly on a two-year comparison. We are breaking out percentage changes on year-by-year comps, and our focus is on changes in the past year.)
*From Publisher's Lunch

Kindle Teams with OverDrive to Lend Library Books

Amazon announced this morning that Kindle owners will soon be able to borrow books from public libraries. Working with vendor OverDrive, which manages e-book lending for the vast majority of public libraries, the deal will make thousands of titles available via more than 11,000 of OverDrive’s public library partners. To date, Kindle has been noticeably absent from library lending, as OverDrive's service worked only with ePub-enabled devices, including the Sony Reader, the Nook, iPads, and smartphones. Amazon officials said that with Kindle Library Lending, library-ebooks managed by OverDrive will now be available for all generations of Kindle devices and for use with free Kindle reading apps on most other devices, including Android, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, PC, Mac, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone.

The deal is a major score for OverDrive, and for libraries, which have posted impressive circulation numbers over the last year as e-readers and e-books have surged in popularity, and demand for library e-books has surged with it. In 2010, OverDrive reported a 200% increase in library e-book checkouts over 2009, with more than 718 million book and title catalog pages viewed, and more that 15 million digital check-outs of nearly 400,000 titles. Since Christmas, 2010, OverDrive officials say checkouts have jumped further, and are already approaching 2010’s annual total—especially impressive figures that are likely to increase  further with the addition of the Kindle, the most popular reading device. “We hear librarians and patrons rave about Kindle,” said Steve Potash, CEO, OverDrive, “so we are thrilled that we can be part of bringing library books to the unparalleled experience of reading on Kindle."

Of course, not every title available for purchase in the Kindle will be available for lending. Major publishers like Macmillan and Simon & Schuster still do not sell e-books to libraries. The Kindle Lending Library will launch “later this year.”

*From an article by  Andrew Albanese in PW Daily

eBook Sales Set Another Record, But Can't Outpace the Decline in Print

eBooks indisputably comprise a significant portion of trade revenues following the Christmas boom in ereading-capable devices, confirmed by another record ebook sales tally from among the 14 publishers who report. The AAP data also shows what publishers' net shipments look like in a world in which no one is sending books to Borders.

February ebook sales totaled $90.3 million, significantly ahead of the record $69.9 million reported the previous month. In January ebooks were the second-largest trade segment, behind trade paperbacks, but in February they moved ahead as the single largest-selling format (with trade paperbacks at $81.2 million).

Just as ebooks rose, print book shipments were down across the board by significant percentages, with adult hardcover suffering the most, declining 43 percent compared to February 2010. Net trade print book sales for the month among the reporting AAP members were $215.2 million--down 30 percent from $308.7 million.

In January, the increase in ebook sales of $37.5 million did not make up for the decline in trade print sales of $50.4 million. It was the same in February, with ebooks' gain of $60.4 million lagging print's decline of $93.5 million.

Overall, ebooks comprise 29.5 percent of the reported trade sales for February. (Which means they are actually somewhat higher, since more publishers report print sales to the AAP than report ebook sales. Similarly, we remind you that direct year-over-year comparisons of ebook sales are skewed because two additional publishers starting reporting ebook data for 2011.)


*An article from today's Publisher's Lunch

January E-book Sales Soar, Top Hardcover, Mass Market Paperback

The surge of e-book buying expected to take place in January following a round of holiday e-reader gift-giving did in fact materialize. According to preliminary estimates from the Association of American Publishers, e-book sales from 16 reporting companies jumped 115.8%, to $69.9 million in January. No other trade segment posted a sales increase in the month. Sales of mass market paperbacks were terrible in January, down 30.9% from the nine reporting companies, falling to $39.0 million, $30 million below the sales of e-books. E-book sales also topped $49.1 million in adult hardcover sales reported by 17 publishers; hardcover sales fell 11.3% in January. Trade paperback sales fell 19.7% in the month but remained above e-book revenue at $83.6 million from 19 houses.

 

Downloadable audio sales increased 8.8% in January, to $6.5 million at 14 publishers, while physical audiobook sales dropped 6.7% to $7.3 million from 20 publishers. Religion was the only print segment to post an increase in January with sales up 6.8%.

Ebooks outsell print books at BN.com

Barnes & Noble is playing catch-up with Amazon's stream of releases about how Kindle is bestest, fastest, biggest-selling item. BN says they have sold "millions" of Nook devices, declaring "the line has become the company's biggest bestseller ever in its nearly 40-year history." More interesting is that they "now sell more digital books" (presumably calculated in units rather than dollars) than printed books via BN.com.

Despite technical problems (which are not mentioned in the press release), BN says they sold "nearly one million" ebooks on Christmas Day--giving you some idea of how many Nook readers were under the tree.

Release