This week was full of news—the publishing industry never sleeps! From the launch of another new tablet that’s rumored to be on par to compete with the iPad to Publishers Weekly‘s Best Books of 2011 report, there’s a lot to catch up on.

  • Another week, another tablet announcement: Barnes & Noble unveiled its new Nook Tablet this week. Although the company is already doing well in the e-reader space, with its Nook and Nook Color, the Nook Tablet looks positioned to compete on the same playing field as the Kindle Fire and the iPad. The Nook Tablet will be available on Nov. 17, priced at $249.
  • The Audit Bureau of Circulations released its findings from a publishing industry survey titled “Going Mobile: How Publishers Are Maturing and Monetizing Their Offerings.” The report noted a distinct trend in digital publishing: 44% of respondents said they have an app enabled for the iPad, but only 8% reported that they thought Apple’s tactics were favorable to publishers. The survey indicated that although many publishers are producing content for the iPad, they are also actively producing or planning to produce content for other tablet or e-reader devices.
  • Last week’s Mashable Media Summit covered a range of topics in new media, but one of the more thought-provoking sessions (at least for our industry) covered the emerging trend of “content and commerce”—where retail and magazines meet. Online retailers, like Gilt, are increasingly turning to editorial, magazine-like content to create a richer experience for shoppers, hoping that enabling them to interact with this content will encourage them to spend. And it looks like it’s working. Alexis Maybank, co-founder and chief marketing officer of Gilt, reports that “the segment of customers that spends time with Gilt’s editorial content is also spending more money.” Does this prove that content (still) really is king? (Read the full report from Mashable here.)
  • Publishers Weekly put out its Best Books of 2011 report. Use the interactive viewer to browse through the winners. Did any of your favorites this year make the cut? (And did you read those favorites in print, or on your tablet/e-reader?)

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This Week in Publishing appears every Friday on the TFP blog. Every week we compile interesting and noteworthy stories from the publishing world and put together a wrap-up to help our readers stay up-to-date. Think we missed something great? Email us at marketing[at]tech4pub.com and let us know.

Posted by: tfpadmin