uE-Book Prices Increase, Sales Slump After Amazon & Publishers Finalize Contractsr

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  (Micah Baldwin)

  Just three months after Amazon tied up its bevy of contracts with top publishing houses, it looks like those deals might not be working out well for several companies, as they’ve reported declining e-book revenues in recent months.

  The Wall Street Journal reports that Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster have all reported declining online book sales after inking deals with Amazon that gave the publishers more say in the prices for their titles.

  A look at the Kindle store found that each of the five big publishers – which also includes Penguin Random House and Macmillian – have an average cost of $10.81 per e-book, while online books from others had an average price of $4.95, research group Codex Group LLC found.

  “Since book buyers expect the price of a Kindle e-book to be well under $9, once you get to over $10 consumers start to say, ‘Let me think about that,’” Codex CEO Peter Hildick-Smith tells the WSJ.

  The group found that in some cases the cost of an e-book was actually on par with the cost of a new hardcover version. For example, a new novel — published by Macmillian — by Jonathan Franzen costs $15.10 for hardcover, just $0.11 more than the e-book price.

  In another case, this time for Hachette, the company priced an e-book new release from James Patterson at $9.99 last year, his latest book, though, is listed at $14.99.

  The company reported a 24% decline in e-book sales in the first half of 2015, the WSJ reports.

  Hachette says the decline in e-book sales is a result of fewer hot titles and the implementation of its Amazon deal.

  According to the Association of American Publishers, the first five months of 2015, publisher e-book revenue for adult, children’s and young adult titles fell 10.4% to $583 million compared with the same time in 2014.

  “The new business model for e-books is having a significant impact on what [the big] publishers report,” one publishing executive tells the WSJ. “There’s no question that publishers’ net receipts have gone down.”

  Still, other publishers tell the WSJ that e-book sales aren’t a result of the Amazon deals.

  In fact, he says the industry is a “title driven business. If you have a good book, price isn’t an issue.”

  E-Book Sales Fall After New Amazon Contracts [The Wall Street Journal]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uThe Backyard Barbecue Isn’t As Popular As It Used To Ber

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  (jpmarth)

  Though visions of hamburgers and hotdogs may be dancing through your head as we approach the Labor Day holiday weekend, the heyday of the backyard barbecue has come and gone, some say, partly because of the high price of beef.

  Before you start clanging your cooking tongs in disbelief, it’s not that grilling outside is going away or no one’s doing it, it’s just that not as many people are cooking in the open air as before: after two decades of increasing popularity, the percentage of U.S. homes using their barbecue grill for a main meal in a typical two-week period dropped to 35% last year from 40% in 2009, Bloomberg reports, citing data from market researcher NPD group.

  One factor? Beef prices have been going up, with the price of a boneless steak sirloin reaching a record $8.84 per pound. Steak makes up 21% of dinners on the grill at home, in comparison to 32% in 1985. Burgers also aren’t as popular, NPD says.

  (If you do make burgers at home, here are four ways you can cook up some juicy ones safely)

  There’s also factors like the Polar Vortex pushing people indoors to cook, and more Hispanic and Asian consumers and the younger generation going for different, international flavors.

  People aren’t buying grills and smokers as much as before either, with shipments for both hitting their peak in North America in 2007, sliding three years straight through 2013.

  “Barbecuing is not going away,” Darren Seifer, a New York-based food and beverage analyst at NPD told Bloomberg. “It’s just that it’s peaked.”

  The good news for the roughly two-thirds of households who will be heading out to the yard and firing up the grill this weekend: wholesale pork prices are down, and supermarkets are likely to respond by offering good deals on the other white meat.

  If you do choose to barbecue or smoke food outdoors this weekend, remember to keep your grill a safe distance from any structures. Any way you cook it, happy eating and have a safe and delightful Labor Day weekend.

  We’ve Hit Peak Barbecue, and Steak Prices Are Partly to Blame [Bloomberg]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uCorinthian Students Continue To Wait For Debt Relief As Department Of Ed. Reviews More Than 7,800 Claimsr

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• The tens of thousands of students seeking debt relief from the federal government after for-profit education chain Corinthian Colleges Inc. closed its Everest University, WyoTech and Heald College campuses, will have to wait a little longer, the Department of Education said Thursday as it provided an update on the number of federal student loans it has discharged and that are currently under consideration.

  The Washington Post reports that the Dept. has received 4,140 claims for borrower defense discharge since it announced in June that it would provide relief for students who attended (after June 20, 2014) the 30 CCI campuses that closed in April.

  Those reviews are taking longer than one might expect as the team has to analyze state laws for each claim.

  Under the law, a borrower defense to repayment provides loan forgiveness to students if their school committed fraud or broke laws.

  Independent monitor for the relief process, Joseph Smith, said during the press conference that his team of four attorneys is reviewing claims where the “facts and law are clear,” such as those who attended Heald Colleges in California, Hawaii and Oregon, the Post reports.

  Nearly 1,992 claims are tied to those schools, which were the center of an April Dept. of Education fine against CCI for lying about job placement rates to students. Smith estimates that it could be at least three months before those claims are resolved.

  As for students who attended other CCI closed schools, there is no specific timeline for settlement.

  “One reason this is taking time is we’re trying to be careful about the basis to create classes,” Smith said. “But wherever we can, we will try to treat those claims alike.”

  In addition to the borrower defense discharges, the Dept. announced it had received 7,815 claims for closed school discharges, 3,128 of which have been approved.

  In all, those resolved cases involved about $40 million in federal student loans, the Post reports.

  While students continue to wait for their claims to be reviewed, Business Insider reports that 7,000 have been placed in forbearance or stopped loan collection status. However, while the students aren’t currently making payments, their debts continue to rack up interest.

  Ultimately, the Department says it has no idea how much it will cost to forgive the student loan debt of eligible former Corinthian students.

  Since 2010, students at the schools have borrowers about $3.2 billion, so the Dept. of Education’s tab could be significant.

  “We’re identifying a number of issues, a number problems, with the law and regulation that we hope to square away so that we can better protect students,” Education Under Secretary Ted Mitchell said. “This is something we hope to take up with Congress.”

  The review panel’s next progress report is expected to be released in mid-October.

  It may be a long time before many Corinthian students get debt relief [The Washington Post]
  The US is forgiving $40 million in student debt taken on by thousands of students [Business Insider]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uKraft Adds 335K More Cases Of Cheese Singles To Recall Over Packaging Choking Hazardr

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  (Jeepers Media)

  After recalling 36,000 cases of Kraft Singles out of concern that consumers could choke on parts of the film covering individual slices, Kraft Heinz has expanded the recall to include 335,000 more cases of cheese for the same packaging reason.

  The company says the problem is more widespread than first believed, with 10 times more of the product involved than was included in the initial recall. In July, Kraft announced it was pulling 36,000 cases of American cheese singles after reports that a thin strip of the film covering individual slices could stick to the food and potentially cause someone to choke.

  At that time, Kraft said it’d received three reports of customers choking, and had received seven other complaints about the packaging. Since then, Kraft says in a press release that it’s received two more new reports of customers choking.

  The new recall includes 1-, 3- and 4-pound Kraft Singles American and White American cheese product with “Best When Used by Dates” ranging from December 2016 to March 2016, followed by the Manufacturing Code S54 or S55. Both those codes are stamped on both the outer box and individual packages.

  The products were sold in the U.S., Puerto Rico, and 10 other countries and territories: Anguilla, the Bahamas, Belize, Bermuda, Grand Cayman, Netherlands Antilles, St. Kitts and Nevis, South Korea, St. Lucia, and the British Virgin Islands.

  The July recall was limited to products shipped to retailers in the U.S., Puerto Rico and Grand Cayman with “Best By” dates of Dec. 29, 2016 to Jan. 4, 2016. For a complete list of products, <strong>click here.

  Only products with the S54 and S55 codes, which refer to the two production lines on which the impacted product was made, are included in this recall. The “Best When Used By” Date and Manufacturing Code are stamped on both the outer box and the individual packages.

  Consumers should return the product to the store where it was purchased for a full refund.

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

ur

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• Here are seven of the best photos that readers added to the Consumerist Flickr Pool in the last week, picked for usability in a Consumerist post or for just plain neatness.

  

  (John Hanley)

  

  (Freaktography)

  

  (winhide)

  

  (Great Beyond)

  

  (Great Beyond)

  

  (Freaktography)

  

  (Steven Depolo)

  Want to see your pictures on our site? Our Flickr pool is the place where Consumerist readers upload photos for possible use in future Consumerist posts. Just be a registered Flickr user, go here, and click “Join Group?” up on the top right. Choose your best photos, then click “send to group” on the individual images you want to add to the pool.

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

ueBay Seller Who Sued Customers For Bad Feedback Orderd To Pay $19,250 In Legal Feesr

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  (Kazuhisa OTSUBO)

  You may remember that back in 2013, an eBay seller filed a lawsuit against a customer who left him accurate negative feedback, claiming that he hadn’t actually read his own suit when the company’s actions led to Internet backlash. Now the case has finally been resolved, with a judge ordering the seller to pay $19,000 in attorneys’ fees to the local lawyers who took the customer’s case pro bono.

  The eBay customer left bad feedback when her package arrived with insufficient postage, and the company filed a libel suit in its home state as a tactic to make her delete the feedback, since she was unlikely to travel there or hire a local attorney. This wasn’t the first time the store had filed this type of lawsuit, observers figured out, and ultimately the case led to multiple sanctions trials and the order to pay legal fees.

  Sales at the eBay store fell, but it is still in business. Public Citizen’s Paul Levy reports that the company has changed its name twice since this story blew up in the spring of 2013.

  The case and the Internet’s negative reaction to it remains a top search result for the company’s original name, MedExpress, and for its attorneys; maybe, Levy speculates, the case will serve as a warning to people who want to file lawsuits for damages to have bad feedback taken down, and for attorneys who would consider taking these cases.

  Med Express v. Nicholls [Public Citizen]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uWaze Accused Of Stealing Map Data From Competing Traffic Appr

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• How do you catch someone who you think is stealing your map data? Just put locations on the map that don’t exist, and then look for those locations to show up on the alleged thief’s maps. That’s what traffic-alerting app PhantomAlert did when it believed that competitor Waze was stealing its location database. Now PhantomAlert is suing Waze, which has since been purchased by Google.

  PhantomAlert alleges that Waze approached the company in 2010 to propose an arrangement where the two companies would share data about points of interest (businesses, landmarks) as well as traffic and map data. They declined the arrangement, and thought both companies would just go on their way.

  PhantomAlert alleges that Waze then began copying information from their maps, including fake items that they deliberately placed in the Points of Interest database. “Waze stole PhantomALERT’s database when Waze could not get it legally, and then sold itself to Google for over $1 billion,” the company’s attorney said in a statement.

  PhantomAlert works with standalone GPS devices as well as mobile devices, and charges a subscription fee. Waze is free to use, supporting itself with location-based ads served up on the road. PhantomAlert also alleges that Waze’s parent company, Google, uses data that originated with PhantomAlert in its own maps and other services.

  RELATED:
  Smartphone Traffic Apps: Are You Gambling With Your Commute?

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist