Melville House Books

Economics & Finance

• David Rees confesses to his years at Bain: “I have been CEO … the entire time”

  We’re getting to this kind of late, but there’s shocking news coming in via Twitter: right-wing cartoonist and artisanal pencil sharpener David Rees has confessed that he has served as CEO… Read more »

• Will Fifty Shades of Grey double Random House’s profits?

  Random House USA has sold nearly 20 million books in E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy, according to a Wall Street Journal report by Jeffrey Trachtenberg. The books—which went… Read more »

• Erotica and the state of publishing in Yemen

  It’s not just Fifty Shades of Grey: it seems that erotic literature is having a moment in Yemen, too. The Yemen Observer reports that street-side booksellers in Tahrir Square are… Read more »

• VAT fight! European Commission investigates France and Luxembourg for slashing ebook tax

  The European Commission has started “infringement procedures” against France and Luxembourg for “unilaterally” lowering VAT taxes on ebooks after January 1, 2012 and thereby breaking European Union law. As the… Read more »

• The dark visions of Alberto Vitale

  Former Random House CEO Alberto Vitale is back from the dead, expounding on the future of publishing and desperately trying to seem relevant in a long interview posted on Publishing… 1 / Read more »

• What does it cost to deliver an ebook?

  In a much-discussed post at Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow focuses on author Andrew Hyde, who recently “wrote and self-published a great-looking travel book” via the usual ebook retail channels but… 5 / Read more »

• Why don’t British lefties buy newspapers?

  In the New Statesman Dominic Ponsford wonders why left-wing readers in the UK won’t buy physical newspapers. The Guardian has gotten a huge boost in online traffic after a year… Read more »

• Arguing about “marginal cost”

  In an article on the Columbia Journalism Review website Ryan Chittum takes on a spate of recent tech posts “arguing that production costs (you know, minor details like advances, editors,… Read more »

• Cutting off Amazon

  The New York Times’ David Streitfeld has a profile of Tulsa-based publisher Educational Development Corporation, which in February pulled its 1,800 children’s books off of Amazon. (A move discussed in… Read more »

• Everyone now agrees: Amazon was a monopoly

  Over and over in the Department of Justice suit against Apple and five of the six largest U.S. publishers the defendants are said to be obsessed with one thing: pricing.… 2 / Read more »