Amazon.com is purchasing the Book Depository International, the U.K. online book retailer that in parts of the English-speaking world outside the U.S. has been a growing competitor to Amazon for online book sales. (It is also well-known for its "watch people shop" feature, allowing users to see book purchases around the world as they take place.) The Bookseller estimated Book Depository annual sales at £120 million ($193 million).
The Book Depository was founded in 2004 by Andrew Crawford and has some six million books available at its fulfillment center in Gloucester and ships free. It also offers some 200,000 e-books. The Book Depository boasts a million customers, and its Dodo Press has re-published more than 15,000 out-of-print or rare titles, available both as books and e-books. Unlike Amazon, the Book Depository has retained a focus on selling books.
The deal will be studied by the U.K.'s Office of Fair Trading to determine whether it will lead to "a substantial lessening of competition" in markets in the U.K., according to the Bookseller. If the Office finds that competition will be lessened, it will refer the matter to the Competition Commission for investigation and a report.
The Office of Fair Trading has already issued an "invitation to comment" and aims to reach a decision by August 30.
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Pearson Australia Group is purchasing the online operations of bankrupt REDgroup Retail, including the Borders Australia and Angus & Robertson websites, Bookseller and Publisher Online reported. Pearson plans to run the businesses separately from its other operations, which include Penguin Australia.
Pearson has reached an agreement with Kobo to ensure "ongoing service" for REDgroup's Kobo customers while reflecting Kobo's need to partner with bricks-and-mortar retailers.
Pearson Australia Group CEO Dionne Higgins called REDgroup's online operations "an integral part of the Australian retail landscape," which "has always enjoyed a strong market share, and an incredibly loyal customer base and we see this acquisition as an opportunity to further build this business."
This deal, too, may be subject to governmental review. The Bookseller reported that the Australian Booksellers Association has asked the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to look into the purchase, charging that the move will "create monopolies in the supply chain" and favor Penguin.
Pearson's Higgins reiterated that the online business will be run separately and said that Penguin will be treated the same as any other publisher.
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In related news, the last company-owned Angus & Robertson stores in Australia will be closed, Bookseller and Publisher Online reported. Two A&R stores in Queensland have been sold and will change their names; a third in Queensland may yet be sold. The other 16 stores will close by the end of July.
The remaining 47 A&R franchised stores are continuing in business and may become independent. The bankruptcy administrator for REDgroup Retail said that it's "likely these [stores] will undergo various name changes in coming weeks."
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E-text future.South Korea, which has been a pioneer in digital media, plans to replace all paper textbooks with electronic tablets at state-run schools by 2015, the Bookseller reported. The government plans to spend 2.2 trillion won (a tad over $2 billion) to convert existing school textbooks and develop cloud computing systems and expects students to download material on "smart pads, smart TVs and a variety of digital devices." Low-income families will be provided with subsidized tablets.
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Fourth of July celebrations yesterday included this item from Fortune. At #57 on its list of "100 great things about America" was "Independent bookstores. Powell's in Portland, Ore., Kepler's in Menlo Park, Calif., the Strand in New York City."
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And check out Brookline Booksmith's blog post for Independence Day, where Kate Robinson wrote, in part: "At the register today I had a surge of pride, our country is only 235 years old. How lucky I am to be on this land. How lucky that I can yell, and criticize and bitch to anyone I want, that my mouth is protected. Think of all the inventions that came for from this country (seriously... check out Wikipedia.) We were borne from brilliant extremist rogue savants.
"I think about how glad I am to work where I work. How there is something in this store to offend everyone, and to please everyone. How Brookline chooses everyday, to support this store, and how grateful we are to try and reflect back the fierce intellectual independence of this town.
"Enjoy your independence, and your independents."
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Author George R.R. Martin has some gruesome plans for the Amazon.de employee who sent 180 copies of Martin's heavily embargoed new novel, A Dance with Dragons, to customers in Germany before its July 12 release date, the Guardian reported.
"I am not happy about this. My publishers are furious. If we find out who is responsible, we will mount his head on a spike," Martin wrote on his blog. "I know that the 180 readers who got advance copies are happy about this, but I assure you, my publishers are not. And thousands of other readers are now getting spoiled, most quite inadvertently and unwillingly, as they stumble over the spoilers cropping up everywhere on the Internet. (Some of the spoilers being posted are false, by the way). Most of those 'lucky' 180 are keeping mum, to be sure, but there are always a few jerkwads in any group, and those are the ones who cannot keep their mouths shut.... All I can say is, pfui."
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Suggesting that the construction of the Great Wall may have been an easier undertaking for the Chinese government than banning books, CNN reported that the "banned in China" label has proven to have its advantages, since "thanks to historical circumstance, newfound mobility, and a thriving market economy, it is now easier than ever for curious mainlanders to get their hands on the entire back catalog of banned books."
Paul Tang, co-owner of the People's Recreation Community bookshop in Hong Kong, estimated more than 90% of his customers come from the mainland and noted the relative ease with which book tourists are able to smuggle banned books back to China.
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Boing Boing showcased a 17th-century Chinese travelling bookcase, describing it as "the love-child of a steamer trunk and a bookcase."
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The Guardian's world literature tour continued with reader recommendations for books about China and a call for suggestions as the series embarked on "something of a journey into the unknown for most English readers, into a country of 238 million people we should be better acquainted with.... We're searching for books which capture something of the Indonesian experience, whether written by Indonesian writers or those coming to Indonesia from elsewhere."
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Are you a Janeite? "If Box Hill is as real to you as Floods Hill, and the summer reading dilemma isn’t which six novels to read, but in which order, you might just be a Janeite," the South Orange Patch observed.
Meredith Barnes, regional coordinator for the Jane Austen Society of America's Central New Jersey chapter, said that while the group meets about six times a year, a signature event is their annual Box Hill Picnic, held August 13 at the Battle of Monmouth grounds.
Barnes noted that in Emma, the Box Hill picnic is an important episode, but "our version is slightly different. At our picnic meeting, we usually share something from the novel that we enjoy or will start a discussion. We eat our lunches and have dessert. It is a very pleasant way to spend the afternoon. Some chapters have actually gone strawberry picking while others have a more formal tea to celebrate the occasion."
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Obituary note: Francis King, who published more than 30 novels over six decades and "in a lengthy association with the Sunday Telegraph was a regular fiction reviewer and for 10 years its drama critic," died Sunday, the Guardian reported. He was 88.
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Dan Brown has topped a list once again. BBC News reported that for the third straight year, Brown's novels were the most donated to Oxfam shops, though he finished third "on the list of bestselling authors at the charity shop chain, up from 10th in 2010."
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Flavorwire showcased 10 great literary spin-offs, noting that "parallel novels are the alternative histories of the fiction world. They take the structure, setting, or characters of a different work of literature and retell them from the perspective of a different character: the monster in Beowulf or the slaves in Gone With the Wind retell the story in John Gardner's Grendel and Alice Randall's The Wind Done Gone."