Hachette Book Group

Beginning as early as the end of the week, 6,000 Borders employees will be out work, and publishers will likely lose millions of dollars in bad debt. Hardest hit will be "midlist" authors -- those whose books aren't bestsellers but still do well enough to justify their publication.

When a book publisher wants to reward an editor's ability to bring in the bestseller bacon -- or sweeten a job offer -- the solution is often a new imprint, ideally one with their name on it. Which explains nothing about why Hachette just gave one to comedy show host Chelsea Handler.

Two of the largest publishing houses have demonstrated again that when authors like Stephenie Meyer or Stieg Larsson become big phenomenons, big sales -- and big profits -- are the result.

Digital books have reached a tipping point. Today Amazon reported that for the first time, sales of Kindle e-books vastly surpassed hardcover books during the last quarter.

Profits at Lagardere, the parent of the Hachette Book Group, have been buoyed for years by Stephenie Meyer's Twilight novels, but with no new books from Meyers, first-quarter earnings have taken a hit.

You'd think that not having to buy an honest-to-goodness book, with its manufacturing costs, would save you money. Not so much anymore, thanks to competition from Apple's new iPad, which makes its official debut Saturday. Amazon.com will no longer heavily discount e-book best-sellers, following a...

As publishers prepare to release more "enhanced" e-books, featuring audio, video, and unreleased material, the door is opening to headaches about rights and contracts, and puzzling literary agents in the U.S. and Britain.

With no end in sight to the war between Amazon and Macmillan, the publisher fighting the retailer's pricing on digital books, rival publisher Hachette is taking Macmillan's side, adopting the agency model and releasing e-books simultaneously with the first print edition.

Macmillan, one of publishing's Big Six, has become the first company to fight Amazon's pricing of e-books. Amazon lost this battle, but it's going to be a long and costly war, with other publishers and with Apple, which unveiled its iPad last week.

When should an e-book be published? Before the physical copy gets published, or months later, or at the same time? Publishers must increasingly weigh tradition against the tide of consumers who want to read their e-books when they want them, and on any device they choose.