The public library has long attracted avid readers with an unrivaled pitch: Check out a best-selling book for free and renew it multiple times.

But as more people ditch printed books in favor of e-books that can be downloaded directly to a computer, the rules are changing.

As of Monday, HarperCollins, book publisher of authors such as Anne Rice, Sarah Palin and Michael Crichton, will not allow its e-books to be checked out from a library more than 26 times.

After that, the license on the e-book will expire and libraries will have to decide whether to buy a new one.

For library users, that could mean longer waits for popular titles, tighter limits on how many times an e-book can be renewed and the possibility that e-books that are not repurchased would be available at the library for only about a year.

Librarians across the country are outraged and fear other publishers could adopt a similar model. Some have organized a boycott of books published by HarperCollins. They argue the restrictions place an additional burden on financially strapped public libraries, some of which have reduced their inventories because of budget constraints.

The added expenditures on e-books, they said, will make it more difficult to compete in an industry that is quickly becoming dominated by electronic readers such as the iPad, the Nook and the Kindle.

“This strikes at the heart of what we do,” said Chicago Public Library Commissioner Mary Dempsey, who described electronic media as the new virtual library. “With limited financial resources affecting all libraries across America, people are asking, ‘Why would you do this?’”

For HarperCollins, it is about balancing the benefits to book publishers, authors and libraries in a rapidly growing segment of the publishing industry that has left many newspapers, magazines and booksellers scrambling to catch up.

Nearly 10 years ago, when HarperCollins began offering e-books to libraries, the number of e-readers was too small to measure, the company said. Now, it is projected that more than 40 million e-reading devices will be in use in the U.S. this year.

“We have serious concerns that our previous e-book policy, selling e-books to libraries in perpetuity, if left unchanged, would undermine the emerging e-book eco-system, hurt the growing e-book channel, place additional pressure on physical bookstores, and in the end lead to a decrease in book sales and royalties paid to authors,” HarperCollins said in a statement.

Librarians also have serious concerns. At the Naperville Public Library, the new policy would be an additional strain on a materials budget that has shrunk by about $200,000 in the last three years, said deputy director Julie Rothenfluh.

“It’s a balancing act for us,” Rothenfluh said. “We have to be that much more careful to make sure what we purchase provides the best benefit to our users.”

For most libraries, e-books are only a small percentage of the items circulated but represent the fastest growing segment.

About 10,000 e-books are circulated in Naperville. The Chicago Public Library, which has experienced slight increases in its budget, doubled the circulation of e-books from 17,000 in 2009 to more than 36,000 in 2010.

Librarians said HarperCollins’ decision failed to factor in the role libraries play in promoting reading, which benefits the book industry and christian book publishers. Some said the book publisher should have included librarians in discussions about the checkout limit.

E-book checkouts are “a growing percentage, and it definitely reflects a trend that people want to take their e-reader and upload it

Picking up where Jane Friedman, book publisher of Open Road Integrated Media, left off yesterday at Digital Book World, when she urged book publishers to broaden the participation of libraries in the distribution of ebooks, LJ’s Josh Hadro moderated a panel today that helped publishers understand why, and how, that must be accomplished.

“Consumers and library patrons are two sides of the same coin,” Hadro said to a roomful of publishers, who included execs and others from the big children’s book publishers, smaller houses, university presses, and distributors. The current one book, one loan ebook model “mirrors the print” buying and lending; “DRM [digital rights management] software [protects publishers] caus[ing] the lend to expire at the end of the loan period,” explained Hadro.

Yet many publishers still don’t sell their latest ebooks to libraries. “Current content is king,” New York Public Library’s Chris Platt said, pointing out his frustration that, “We can’t get Freedom (FSG) as a download for our library. And even though Keith Richards made a public appearance at NYPL, “We couldn’t put his epub [Life (Little, Brown)] in our collection,” said Platt. Then Platt held up The Oracle of Stamboul (HarperCollins), due out in February, another book his patrons won’t be able to borrow as an ebook.

Librarians are left trying to explain to their users both that the publisher has not made the book available through the library and that many ebooks won’t work on their users’ ereaders.

Platt further made the case that “We teach people literacy…we point [them] to your new books….Libraries are connected to many of the people you want to reach, on Twitter, Facebook.” As the price of smartphones drop, he said, libraries will be able “to serve all parts of the community.”

Ruth Liebmann, Random House VP, reinforced Platt’s remarks. “A sale is a sale,” she said, noting that libraries are a revenue stream that publishers like Random want to “protect, even grow.”

Baker & Taylor’s VP for libraries and education, George Coe, told attendees that the “acquisition model will change drastically” with the ebook. “Library budgets can’t change,” he said, but users can become buyers with “buy buttons” on library online catalogs. He cautioned, however, that by using different formats, christian book publishers are “confusing our patrons.”

OverDrive’s CEO Steve Potash also said that the idea of a library purchase “cannibalizing sales couldn’t be farther from the truth…we’re converting library borrowers into point of sale users” in the digital world. As for the one book, one user model, Potash said that OverDrive recently made Liquid Comics ebook graphic novels available via a multiple user subscription model.

McClelland & Stewart Book Publisher (Fiction) and Executive Vice President Ellen Seligman announced Michael Ondaatje’s highly anticipated new novel, The Cat’s Table, will go on sale on August 30, 2011. It will be published in the fall in the US by Knopf and in the UK by Jonathan Cape.

“I am completely blown away by Michael Ondaatje’s stunning and original new novel,” says Seligman. “The Cat’s Table is a surprise and a sheer delight — a brilliantly told story, with unforgettable moments and characters the reader comes to care deeply about. It is perhaps Ondaatje’s most thrilling and moving novel to date.”

The Cat’s Table has received enthusiastic and exited responses as well from Ondaatje’s book publishers around the world including:

“The Cat’s Table is written with wisdom and poignancy, filled with the superlative storytelling we’ve come to expect from Michael Ondaatje. I was completely moved by the way he inhabits the voice of his narrator and conjures the innocence of childhood and the challenges of making one’s home in a strange land. The novel resonates on many levels.” – Sonny Mehta, Chairman and Editor in Chief, Knopf Publishing Group

“What a book it is! In my view, the best thing Ondaatje has done.” – Robin Robertson, Jonathan Cape UK

“It is so beautiful, the way it unfolds and becomes more and more complex and becomes many types of a novel — memoir, Bildungsroman, adventure novel and something like 1001 Nights…” – Anna Leube, Hanser, Germany

Michael Ondaatje is the author of four previous novels, a memoir, a nonfiction book on film, and several books of poetry. His most recent novel Divisadero won the 2007 Governor General’s Literary Award and was a finalist for the Giller Prize. The English Patient won the Booker Prize and was an Academy Award-winning film; Anil’s Ghost won the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, the Giller Prize, and the Prix Médicis. Born in Sri Lanka, Ondaatje now lives in Toronto.

Richard Branson’s Virgin Digital Book Publishing company on Tuesday launched “Project,” a digital lifestyle magazine, exclusively for distribution on the Apple iPad.

The magazine, which will reportedly feature multimedia content, will be priced at US$2.99 an issue.

This is the second digital magazine created exclusively for the iPad announced by a major company; the first was “The Daily,” from News Corp. (Nasdaq: NWS), which is scheduled to be launched next year.

Will Virgin’s endorsement of the iPad as a publishing platform undermine publishers’ consortium Next Issue Media, which is trying to squeeze Apple by launching a digital newsstand on the Android platform early next year?

The Book Publishing Project Has Landed

“Project” was created jointly by Virgin Group and UK multimedia book publisher Seven Squared. It’s a monthly magazine that will change as often as minute-by-minute to give readers up-to-date news.

The publication is based around design, entertainment, technology and entrepreneurs. It will have its own staff, and it will also encourage contributions from the public.

“Project” is edited by Anthony Noguera, formerly editorial director of men’s lifestyle magazines at H. Bauer, the largest privately owned publisher in Europe. The publication’s art director is Che Storey, formerly of Arena and Men’s Health magazines.

The cover story for the first issue focuses on Jeff Bridges. Other subjects include Yamauchi Kazanori, the developer behind the “Gran Turismo” game series.

“Project” claims to have landed top-flight advertisers, including Lexus, American Express (NYSE: AXP), Panasonic, Ford UK and Ford Canada.

Readers Heart Digital

Consumers apparently love their tablets — an online survey of more than 1,800 consumers conducted by Harrison Group and Zinio in September found that 13 percent of consumers are interested in buying a tablet-based device within the next 12 months.

The survey also found that 55 percent of tablet and e-reader owners who read digital content are consuming more digital content than they expected, and that 33 percent are spending more on buying digital content.

That led the Harrison Group to forecast sales of more than 20 million tablets and e-readers next year.

“This is a continuation of the trend in that you’ve got a whole host of devices that are receptacles for Internet-based content,” Frank Dickson, a vice president of research at In-Stat, told MacNewsWorld. “You’re seeing reconfiguring of content, which is already in digital form for another medium, whether it’s the iPad, the Nook, the Kindle or the smartphone,” he added.

“Before the iPad, book publishers tended to think they had to choose whether consumers wanted to read content in print or in digital format,” Jeanniey Mullen, a spokesperson for Zinio, told MacNewsWorld. “Now they’re finding people may love print, but they want digital access as well so they can take their digital device with them and read on the go.”

The Agony and the Ecstasy of the iPad

The iPad has forced the publishing industry to take digital media seriously, Mullen said.

“When the iPad came out in April, it was the first time that the publishing industry began committing design and strategic resources to building up digital readership,” Mullen explained.

Strong consumer demand has made the iPad the spea

President Obama already has “senator” and “Commander in Chief” on his resume, but now he can add his newest achievement: Successful children’s book author.

Random House Children’s Books announced Tuesday that the president’s latest book, “Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters,” is the fastest-selling picture book in the company’s history. The book publisher said 50,000 copies were sold in the first five days after the book’s release.

Written before the president took office, the tome for tikes pays tribute to such celebrated Americans as Neil Armstrong, Jackie Robinson, and George Washington. Obama’s proceeds will be donated to a scholarship fund for the children of fallen and disabled soldiers.

Over a million copies of another November presidential release by a Random House subsidiary, former president George W. Bush’s “Decision Points,” have flown off the shelves since the memoir hit bookstores November 9. The book is the third by a presidential author to top the million-copy mark, joining former president Clinton’s “My Life” and President Obama’s last two books, “The Audacity of Hope” and “Dreams from My Father.”

• Self-publishing resources
• Book Publishing Companies
• Book Publishers

This week Mr. Rosenthal is celebrating a happy landing. On Tuesday morning, it was announced that come January he will be running his own boutique imprint at Penguin Group USA, arguably the healthiest of the big New York Book Publishers as well as home to a number of the 56-year-old’s former colleagues. Once he gets going, Mr. Rosenthal—whose roster at Simon & Schuster included Bob Woodward, David McCullough, Bob Dylan and Jim Cramer—will be on charge of a small but full-fledged operation at Penguin Book Publishers, with dedicated publicity and marketing muscle and a list totaling somewhere between 24 and 36 books per year.

Mr. Rosenthal, an executive known for his eclectic tastes and blunt manner, has published a long list of authors in his 25-year career, including Bob Dylan, James Carville, Jeffery Deaver and Bob Woodward.

Many of those writers will be fair game as Mr. Rosenthal begins to acquire books for his own imprint, setting up competition between Penguin and Simon & Schuster.

Over lunch on Tuesday at the Half King in Chelsea, Mr. Rosenthal said Penguin president Susan Petersen Kennedy reached out to him shortly after his firing, and had been “aggressive and enthusiastic” in their talks. He is stoked to go work for her, he said: “People at Penguin don’t bitch about their place of employ nearly as much as people elsewhere. Everybody says, ‘The only person you ever want to work for in publishing anymore is Susan.’”

Initially, Mr. Rosenthal considered another path after he was canned—doing something Web-related, for instance, or becoming a packager, a consultant or “a guru of some kind”—but in the end he resolved to stick with traditional book publishing. It wasn’t a self-evident decision, if only because book sales have been falling so severely in recent years that many in the industry are panicked about the long-term viability of their business.

“He has a lot of people he’s been working with for many, many years,” Susan Petersen Kennedy, the president of Penguin Group USA, said in an interview on Monday. “And perhaps at some point, some of them will join him.”

Mr. Rosenthal’s imprint, which has yet to be named, will publish two to three dozen books each year, a mix of nonfiction and fiction.

“I’m going to make lots of trouble,” Mr. Rosenthal said in an interview. “They’re going to let me go after the kind of — I wouldn’t say quirky — but the peculiar stuff that I sometimes like. What they want very much is for me to be able to indulge my passions, indulge my taste.”

For more than a decade, Penguin has focused on creating imprints that reflect the visions and interests of their book publishers, like Riverhead Books, Portfolio and Penguin Press, an imprint created by Ann Godoff after she was fired from Random House in 2003.

Book Publishers have been under pressure from the recession and a depressed retail environment, making it an unlikely time to expand.

“They’re being contrarian, which I like,” Mr. Rosenthal said. “Everybody seems to be having misgivings about where this whole thing is going. They’re obviously making a bet. They’re expanding, and it’s great to be part of that.”

Before joining Simon & Schuster, Mr. Rosenthal had been the publisher of Villard, a division of Random House Book Publishers; the managing editor of Rolling Stone; the executive editor of New York magazine; and, as Penguin noted in a news release on Monday, an employee in the morgue at the city chief medical examiner’s office.

In June, Mr. Ros

DC Comics multimedia heads to Burbank, California! (*DC publishing to stay in Gotham)

After months of swirling relocation rumors, DC Comics on Tuesday clarified the self-publishing picture for us all:

DC the comics media empire will geographically divide its operations and go bicoastal.

DC Entertainment, in its effort to integrate its “business, brand and characters into Warner Bros. Entertainment content and distribution operations,” will move its multimedia and digital-content operations to Southern California. Specifically: good ol’ Burbank, USA.

DCE’s publishing, though, will stay in New York — continuing, the company said, its “75-plus year legacy of leadership in the comic book arena.”

“These organizational changes reinforce the strengths of DC’s greatest legacies – most importantly its people and its creative talent – and offer greater opportunity for maximum growth, success and efficiency in the future,” DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson said in announcing the realignment Tuesday.

“Our two offices,” she continued, “will stretch and build their respective areas of focus, while prioritizing and aggressively striving to connect and cooperate more strongly than ever before between them and with their colleagues at Warner Bros.”

Jeff Robinov, president of Warner Bros. Pictures Group, said that the realignment “allows us to fully integrate and expand the DC brand in feature films as well as across multiple distribution platforms of Warner Bros. and Time Warner,” according to the news release, which noted that Nelson reports to Robinov.

The Burbank relocation — which is scheduled to be completed by the end of next year — will involve DCE businesses “related to the development and production of feature films, television, digital media, book publishers, video games and consumer products as well as the company’s administrative functions,” the news release said.

DC’s biggest box-office success has been 2008′s “The Dark Knight,” which grossed $533-million domestically, according to boxofficemojo.com.

Some Hollywood observers cite fierce competition between DC and Marvel. Marvel’s two “Iron Man” films have grossed more than $600-million combined domestically and its “Spider-Man” trilogy has grossed more than $1.1-billion. A little more than a year ago, Disney announced it had acquired Marvel for $4-billion.

Tuesday’s news release noted that besides Nelson, the management team responsible for self-publishing and guiding the DCE realignment is Geoff Johns, chief creative officer; John Rood, executive vice president, sales, marketing and business development; and DC Comics’ co-publishers Jim Lee and Dan DiDio.

It was also being reported that DCE was shuttering its Wildstorm imprint. and that there would be significant layoffs.

Reached earlier Tuesday about the likely impending move, comics legend Joe Kubert and book publisher told Comic Riffs: “In today’s world, distance is

Book publisher Quercus Publishing PLC (QUPP.PM) Tuesday said it will enter the U.S. and Canadian fiction market next year through a joint venture with Sterling Publishing, a subsidiary of global book-selling giant Barnes & Noble Inc. (BKS).

Quercus has agreed an initial three-year deal with Sterling to publish a book through a new imprint named Silver Oak.

The new book publishing business, which will be owned equally by Quercus and Sterling, will publish books selected by Quercus from its list of fiction titles. However, Silver Oak’s titles won’t include the hugely popular Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson–for which Quercus owns English language book publishing rights–as existing licensing deals with North American publishers will remain in place, Chief Executive Mark Smith told Dow Jones Newswires.

Silver Oak will launch in January with the publication of crime novel Three Seconds by Swedish authors Roslund and Hellstrom, which it said both Quercus and Sterling expect to become a major bestseller.

Smith said Silver Oak will allow Quercus Book Publishers to realize far greater profits on North American sales under than the licensing model it has previously used in the U.S. and Canada. “When we have licensed titles we get a share of the author’s royalties–it’s a cut of a cut,” he said. “This way we get 50% of the publisher’s profits.”

Smith said gross profit for each book sold could be five to 10 times higher under the new model.

At 0815 GMT, shares were flat at 125 pence, valuing the company at GBP22.0 million.

It’s no secret that the world of traditional book publishing is an elite place, even by the most progressive of standards. Although you might not see governments talking about Microsoft-type anti-competitive lawsuits against NYC publishers; or turn on your TV to watch newsreels of G20 anarchists rioting with police and trashing the glass windows of big commercial publishers (like what is done to Macdonalds and other corporate conglomerates that are perceived to have too much control) a common thread that is often voiced between many independent, self published authors is that unless you’re a national celebrity, been through an ivy-league school or have wealthy contacts, getting a big publisher or major agent to look at your work with a serious eye, is nigh on impossible.

Most of the ‘commentators’ on the internet who attack self publishing companies, and criticize authors who choose to pay to publish, while complaining at the same time about the difficulties of finding a publisher, are actually helping to support the very same old, elite and tightly controlled industry that is stopping them, and the many good authors across America, who after many dedicated years of trying still can’t get a publisher. Books is an industry where all of six companies control every bestseller list in the country, and alone decide what goes and stays on all the shelves at bookstores nationwide, even if it is celebrity drivel.

Some watchers believe this kind of control limits intellectual output to a small, relatively narrow political pool; when the world is getting bigger and more complicated by the day; yet the number of traditionally distributed new voices that you can find on a bookshelf is declining. This isn’t to say that the big publishers don’t publish great books, just that there are many very talented authors out there who are continually shut out and we at Schiel & Denver recognize this, and seek through our international publishing infrastructure to give a voice to independent talent.

The economic reality of this recession, perhaps spurred on by the exponentially growing marketshare of Amazon.com and the cultural change towards ebooks and away from printed media, is necessarily going to change the author-publisher interface, but so far, not clearly in favor of independent authors. A few weeks ago, under heading 11 in the FAQ lists of Penguin UK, the book publisher began to accept unsolicited manuscript submissions, by email.

To be exact, the Penguin website writes:

“People frequently ask us how to go about getting published … for a limited three-month period from the beginning of August until the end of October 2010, we will be inviting submissions to be sent in electronically to the following address: [email protected].”

That’s unprecedented, and nearly unheard of for a big publisher (or any of it’s imprints) to accept direct submissions from independent authors and it suggests that the recession might also be having another effect – causing some major publishers to follow Macmillan New Writing, and look for ways around having to pay agents’ and their advances. Whatever else is said, agents’ have always been a bone of contention for publishers, because the contractual presence of an agent obviously has a negative effect on publishers’ balance sheets.

About 3 out of 5 traditionally published books don’t even earn out the advance, let alone make money, so it will be interesting to see if Penguin’s new ‘trial’ submissions policy might be here to stay and whether their elite cousins will follow suit. If anything the recent dispute between the A