In yet another blow for the book industry we have learned that AudioGO have suspended business.
"I can confirm that AudioGO has temporarily suspended business operations whilst we seek an investment or a sale of the business." AudioGO's Rachel Josephson told the Bookseller Magazine and added: "There is a considerable amount of interest in AudioGO and we are hopeful of achieving a swift resolution. Protecting and respecting the rights of everyone that we work with is uppermost in our considerations and we are grateful for the fantastic support we have received from our colleagues throughout the industry." Once again Amazon are being blamed with their own Audible service making huge dents into the audiobook industry. It will be interesting to see if conventional publishing will step into snap up AudioGO in order to challenge Amazon.
E BOOKS A GO GO: According to the Kindle Nation Daily blog, the Amazon Kindle edition of the new Dan Brown novel The Lost Symbol is outselling its hardcover counterpart, an interesting development.
It is important to note however that the hardcover has been on sale, via pre-order, for 150 days already and it would appear that most excited buyers put in there orders sometime during that period. The Kindle edition is also significantly cheaper.
The whole situation is interesting to note however, as the Kindle edition is outselling any book available at Amazon, whether in print or digital, a good sign for the device, which many have called overly expensive for its functionality
GOOGLE BOOKS DEAL DELAYED: WASHINGTON — A New York judge on Thursday ordered that a hearing over a settlement between Google and US authors and publishers be postponed to take into account objections on copyright and anti-trust grounds.
US District Court Judge Denny Chin agreed as expected with the request from the US Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers to delay the October 7 "fairness hearing" on the legal settlement.
Facing objections from the US Justice Department and others to the deal, the authors and publishers asked Chin on Tuesday to delay the hearing on the settlement that would allow Google to scan and sell millions of books online.
Chin said that Google and the authors and publishers were in negotiations with the Department of Justice which "will result in significant changes to the existing settlement agreement."
NEW EBOOK READER: River has set a local price for its e-book reader, the Story, which is now available to pre-order for Korean buyers. The device carries a price of 358,000 KRW (~290 USD) directly from the company. The package includes a 2GB SD card, folding case, and two free book downloads.
The device integrates a 6-inch display and a QWERTY keyboard, while a 3.5mm headphone jack provides audio feeds. The device is similar in form to the Kindle, with a thin profile that appears to fit easily in the folding case. A variety of formats are supported, including EPUB, PDF, raw text and Office documents.
