INDUSTRY NEWS
WOWIO, Inc. is a public company trading on the Over The Counter market. It is an “OTC BB” company, which mandates certain eligibility requirements. The trading symbol for WOWIO is “WWIO”.
UPDATE: FINRA approved the company's reverse split, effective July 7, 2015. For 20 days beginning July 7, 2015, the company's trading symbol will be WWIOD.
Comixology cuts Apple, Google out of digital-comics kickback
by Seth Rosenblatt
@sethr April 26, 2014 3:37 PM PDT
Following Amazon's purchase of the digital-comics marketplace, Comixology updates its Comics apps to prevent Apple and Google from taking a cut. The move makes it harder to buy comics through the app.
Digital-comics marketplace and reader Comixology updated its Comics apps for Android and iOS on Saturday to stop Apple and Google from taking a percentage of purchases made through the apps.
The move returns to Comixology, which was just purchased by Amazon for an undisclosed sum, a significant portion of its sales that had been going to the tech titans. They were collecting 30 percent of the price of every comic sold. Most new comics retail for the same price digitally as in print, between $2.99 and $3.99, and at least one company -- DC Entertainment -- has said that digital comics now represent around 15 percent of its new comics revenue. (Read More Here)
M&A in Publishing Technology Heats up; More Acquisitions to Come
By Jeremy Greenfield, Editorial Director, Digital Book World, @JDGsaid
Just when you thought you had a handle on what’s going on in the world of e-book technology, everything changes.
A spate of acquisitions have quietly re-shaped the e-book conversion and e-book distribution landscape and it’s just the beginning of widespread consolidation among technology vendors that serve the book industry, say industry executives, bankers and publishers.
In August 2011, printing and logistics giant R.R. Donnelley acquired digital content publisher and distributor LibreDigital for $19.9 million; this, just a day after acquiring Sequence Personal, a software firm that enables readers to curate and publish content. In November, Manilla-based outsourcing firm SPi Global acquired India-based e-publishing firm Laserwords. Just days later, Rakuten, known as the Amazon of Japan, announced its $315 million acquisition of Canadian e-bookseller Kobo.
The pace hasn’t slowed in 2012. (Read More Here)
Amazon-owned ComiXology ditches in-app purchases on iOS and removes Google Play payments on Android
By Owen Williams, thenextweb.com
Two short weeks after being acquired by Amazon, ComiXology has announced that it’ll be retiring its app, instead releasing a new, read-only version that forces customers to buy comic books through a website instead.
On iOS, purchases are now gone, and the app asks you to visit the company website to purchase comics, but on Android, the company has simply removed Google Play payments and has added Paypal/Credit Card purchasing instead. (Read More Here)
Amazon Plays Hardball -- and Puts the Hurt on Consumers
by Nick Statt
@nickstatt May 24, 2014 10:04 AM PDT
If the average Amazon-loving book buyer were to go to the company's website and attempt to order a book from publishing house Hachette, they'd find everything from price increases to availability issues to overt roadblocks to buying those titles.
The reason: Amazon is in a negotiations standoff with the publisher, which owns the imprints Grand Central Publishing; Orbit; and Little, Brown; among others. A months-long battle around e-book pricing now has trickled down to Hachette authors and -- in perhaps a worrisome harbinger for Amazon's consumer-first reputation -- book buyers.
There's no one-size-fits-all approach to e-book pricing, and Amazon hammers out models with publishers on a case-by-case basis. But after pricing talks fell through with Hachette, Amazon began a series of increasingly aggressive maneuvers to force the publisher to play by its rules and accept lower prices. (Read More Here)
Amazon Feud With Publishers to Escalate as Contracts End
By Edmund Lee, Adam Satariano and Carol Hymowitz
June 5, 2014 1:16 PM PDT
The world’s largest online retailer is already feuding with Hachette Book Group and Bonnier Media. CBS Corp. (CBS)’s Simon & Schuster and News Corp. (NWSA)’s HarperCollins will soon come up for renegotiation, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the contracts are private. That means best-selling authors such as HarperCollins’ Veronica Roth, writer of the Divergent trilogy, and Simon & Schuster’s Stephen King could be entangled in the controversy. (Read More Here)
Slowing ebook sales may embolden publishers in Amazon spat
By Aaron Pressman
June 26, 2014
The slowdown, after years of exponential growth, could help explain why major publisher Hachette, owned by French media company Lagardere, has been holding out against Amazon, according to Robert Picard, director of research at the University of Oxford's Reuters Institute and an expert on media economics.
"The conflict is a result of the maturation of online book sales distribution and publishers’ starting to find effective ways to directly distribute themselves or in cooperation with other publishers," he says. "Some, like Hachette, are now willing to challenge Amazon." (Read More Here)
Amazon, a Friendly Giant As Long As It's Fed
By David Streitfeld
July 12, 2014
Vincent Zandri hails from the future. He is a novelist from the day after tomorrow, when Amazon has remade the worlds of writing, printing, selling and reading books so thoroughly that there is hardly anything left besides Amazon.
Mr. Zandri, an author of mystery and suspense tales, is published by Thomas & Mercer, one of Amazon Publishing’s many book imprints. He is edited by Amazon editors and promoted by Amazon publicists to Amazon customers, nearly all of whom read his books in electronic form on Amazon’s e-readers, Amazon’s tablets and, soon, Amazon’s phones.
His novels are not sold in bookstores, and rarely found in public libraries. His reviews are written by Amazon readers on the Amazon website. “Has a little bit of something for everyone,” one enthusiast exclaimed. “Heavy machinery, love, humor and mystery.” And his latest prize was an award from Amazon. (Read More Here)
Mobile Ad Revenue to Surpass Newspapers, Magazines, Radio This Year - Forecast
By Greg Sterling
July 7, 2014
According to a new forecast from eMarketer, total media spending in the US will see its largest increase in a decade reaching $180.1 billion. The firm says that the growth will be lead by TV and mobile.
Overall digital ad spending will represent almost 30 percent of all US ad spending this year according to eMarketer, which bases its forecasts on a wide range of third party data including other firms’ media spending forecasts.
The eMarketer forecast predicts that mobile advertising will represent roughly 10 percent of all media ad spending. That would mean it would exceed traditional media such as newspapers, magazines and radio — reportedly for the first time.
Mobile will capture 9.8 percent of overall media spending this year; newspapers will represent 9.3 percent, magazines 8.4 percent and radio 8.6 percent. While these precise figures may or may not be accurate they represent the directional spending trend. (Read More Here)
