Matt Buchanan of Gizmodo has a great article up about book-buyers’ rights in the age of ebooks and licensing.

If you buy a regular old book, CD or DVD, you can turn around and loan it to a friend, or sell it again. The right to pass it along is called the “first sale” doctrine. Digital books, music and movies are a different story though. Four students at Columbia Law School’s Science and Technology Law Review looked at the particular issue of reselling and copying e-books downloaded to Amazon’s Kindle or the Sony Reader, and came up with answers to a fundamental question: Are you buying a crippled license to intellectual property when you download, or are you buying an honest-to-God book?

In the fine print that you “agree” to, Amazon and Sony say you just get a license to the e-books—you’re not paying to own ‘em, in spite of the use of the term “buy.” Digital retailers say that the first sale doctrine—which would let you hawk your old Harry Potter hardcovers on eBay—no longer applies. Your license to read the book is unlimited, though—so even if Amazon or Sony changed technologies, dropped the biz or just got mad at you, they legally couldn’t take away your purchases. Still, it’s a license you can’t sell.

But is this claim legal?

Link (via BoingBoing)

The vultures circle as publishing house “The Friday Project” moves toward liquidation.

The wrangle for the bones of failed “blook” publisher The Friday Project heated up this morning, with Random House joining HarperCollins in talks to buy the company’s list before it goes into liquidation.

Founded in 2005, The Friday Project (TFP) won much publicity for its exclusive focus on publishing material that started life in the blogosphere. Successful titles have included Blood, Sweat and Tea: Real-Life Adventures in an Inner-City Ambulance by Tom Reynolds, and In Stitches: The Highs and Lows of an A&E Doctor by Dr Nick Edwards.

Link to full Guardian article.

From The Canadian Press:

A group of crusading intellectual property lawyers at Stanford Law School say they will help defend a small publishing house being sued by author J.K. Rowling over its plan to print an unauthorized companion guide to her Harry Potter series.

Full story on Google News; you can find the online version of the Harry Potter Lexicon at hp-lexicon.org or visit the publisher here.

HarperCollins announced Wednesday that it had set up a special link, http://mobile.harpercollins.com, that will allow browsers to view excerpts from more than a dozen new releases, including Michael C. White’s “Soul Catcher” and Michael Korda’s “Ike,” a biography of President Eisenhower.

“Reaching consumers on mobile devices and the Internet is increasingly important for publishers,” Brian Murray, president of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide, said in a statement that noted the publisher has some 10,000 titles already digitized.

Several publishers have been offering content for cell phone use and the iPhone, which already allows consumers to watch videos, take pictures, listen to music and surf the Web, is an obvious outlet for an industry anxious to boost sales and keep up with the latest technology.

Link to the Yahoo News article

Sales of the seventh and last Harry Potter book are, to no one’s surprise, breaking records in the publishing industry.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has thrown off concerns over internet spoilers and broken embargoes to confirm its position as the world’s fastest-selling book today, with Nielsen Bookscan estimating a staggering 2.7m copies sold in the UK of the seventh and final book during a hectic period of just 24 hours - a 35% increase on first-day sales of JK Rowling’s last blockbuster, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

The figure, which includes sales through UK bookshops, supermarkets, internet sites and newspapers on Saturday July 21 2007, brings to a close a remarkable run for the popular children’s serial, which saw record-breaking sales of 1.8m copies in one day for the fifth book in the series, and 2m for the sixth. UK sales of the Harry Potter series as a whole now stand at 22.6m copies, with 72.1m copies sold worldwide.

Link to the Guardian article

Go into any bookstore and you’ll see photos on covers everywhere. I’m not sure whether publishers think photography sells books better or they’re just too cheap to pay an artist, but it seems to be a growing trend in cover design.

[…]

The thing is, when a publisher buys a photo, they don’t get exclusive rights to it unless they commission the photo shoot themselves (which is rare) - meaning anyone can come along and pay to use the same image, including other cover designers.

View full story on the Novelish blog for three examples of stock photography being repeated on book covers.

The shortlist of the Kim Scott Walwyn prize was released today.

The prize was set up to honour the memory of Kim Scott Walwyn, a publishing director at Oxford University Press, who died in 2002 aged just 45, and aims to reward “outstanding achievements by women in publishing”.

This year’s shortlist is made up of Rebecca Carter, who is an editor at large at Random House, Susanna Lob, the head of marketing, reference and online publishing at Oxford University Press, and Annette Thomas, the managing director of Nature Publishing Group.

The winner, who will receive a cheque for £3,000, will be announced on May 10.

Link to the Guardian article

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows US, UK, and UK adult cover art, from left to right:

Links to larger versions:

• Large US cover
  
• Large UK cover (including back)
• Large UK adult art (including back)

The jacket text on the UK covers reads:

Harry has been burdened with a dark, dangerous and seemingly impossible task: that of locating and destroying Voldemort’s remaining Horctuxes. Never has Harry felt so alone, or faced a future so full of shadows. But Harry must somehow find within himself the strength to complete the task he has been given. He must leave the warmth, safety and companionship of The Burrow and follow without fear or hesitation the inexorable path laid out for him…

In this final, seventh instalment of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling unveils in spectacular fashion the answers to many questions that have been so eagerly awaited. The spellbinding, richly woven nerrative, which plunges, twists and turns at a breathtaking pace, confirms the author as a mistress of storytelling, whose books will be read, reread and read again.