Issues in Scholarly Communication is a newsletter produced by Paula Kaufman, University Librarian and Dean of Libraries, for the Illinois community. Entries from 2001-2005 newsletter are available.
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Amazon has acquired BookSurge, a POD manufacturer based in Charleston, SC but with branch operations and relationships in a number of other countries. BookSurge provides services to both publishers and about 4,000 individual authors. Amazon vp of media products Greg Greeley says in a statement, "Our new relationship with BookSurge will provide Amazon customers an ever-expanding selection of titles that are not available through other channels." One knowledgeable observer speculates that Amazon may be interested in pairing on-demand manufacturing with its ever-growing library of print-ready digital book files, scanned for their Search Inside the Book program. In a less-publicized move in a related area, Amazon has apparently bought European-based Mobipocket, a PDA e-publishing competitor to Motricity (which owns what began as Palm-based ereading software and inventory). The move was disclosed as Franklin Electronic Publishers reported selling its shares in MobiPocket to Amazon for about $2.5 million, "in connection with Amazon's purchase of all MobiPocket's outstanding shares." Based in France, Mobipocket was founded in 2000 (as was BookSurge). Amazon had not responded to our query on the deal before publication. Publishers Lunch 4/4/05
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Posted by at April 25, 2005 10:48 AM
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