A couple of press articles on the Andrew Wylie/Odyssey Editions thing have picked up on some remarks that I made to The Bookseller last week on Hachette's digital sales - in particular Andrew Franklin's piece in The Independent, which asserts that digital accounts for 8% of Hachette's turnover. Though I wouldn't rule this out at some point in the future, it's worth clarifying that what I said and was run in The Bookseller was that at most digital can account for 8% of volume sales of some new titles in publication month - the average is of course lower. It's a somewhat less exciting statistic given the various caveats, but nonetheless, it is an indicator of the way the market is going.

"It's paper that makes the book industry what it is. As soon as you remove paper from the equation, the costs change, the timing changes, the barriers to entry change, the risk changes. And defenders of the status quo don't like change . . . If the demise of paper means that good people doing good work in important industries will have to find faster and better ways to do their jobs, I don't think that's a bad thing."

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/07/but-who-will-speak-for-the-trees.html

"[I]n 2009, 21.3 million PC Game full-game digital downloads were purchased online in the U.S. compared to 23.5 million physical units purchased at retail during the same period . . . [D]igital downloads represented close to half of unit sales across digital and retail at 48 percent in 2009, and accounted for 36 percent of dollar sales."

http://www.npd.com/press/releases/press_100721.html

"Odyssey Editions is an ebook publishing company designed to bring classic works of fiction and nonfiction to dedicated readers globally."

http://www.odysseyeditions.com/About-Odyssey-Editions

For 'dedicated readers', read 'Amazon customers exclusively' for the next two years. Amazon's press release here:

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1450416

Finally, Peter Collingridge on producing the ebooks:

http://www.enhanced-editions.com/press-release/2010/07/enhanced-editions-the-wylie-agency-and-amazon-launch-odyssey-editions/

Quite a good segment on the Monocle Weekly podcast, with Brett Wolstencroft of Daunt Books talking about summer reads and quality bookselling. It starts at 33:45 if one isn't interested in Roman Polanski or the Farnborough Airshow.

http://www.monocle.com/The-Monocle-Weekly/edition/edition68.aspx

"If the book industry had a Facebook profile, it would list its relationship with ISBN as it's complicated."

http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2010/07/what-is-ebook-anyway.html

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"While discretionary spending on items such as food, jewellery and cosmetics has slumped over the past two years, US consumers have retained a healthy appetite for mobile phones, netbook computers and other devices that enable them to stay connected … 'When people were in dire economic straits and thinking through what their next steps were, they chose the idea of being connected over other discretionary choices they might make.'" [Ben Dunn, Best Buy.]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d190bd78-54a0-11df-8bef-00144feab49a.html

This piece in The Guardian articulates neatly what I feel about Posterous versus Wordpress. Since switching, I've found it a joy to use.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/jul/12/posterous-wordpress