Crains New York - June 25, 2012 - (Page 4)

IN THE Macmillan’s e-book gambit MARKETS Sci-fi imprint leads publishing industry’s quest to loosen the grip of Amazon BY MATTHEW FLAMM Squeezed into the northern crook of the Flatiron Building, the oddly shaped offices of Macmillan’s powerhouse science-fiction division make a fitting setting for a publisher that has often zigged when others zagged.Tor/Forge Books, which already runs an unconventional website, will soon be the first mainstream publisher to open an e-bookstore. It will also soon become the first major house to strip its e-books of anti-piracy software. Without digital rights management, or DRM, e-books from sci-fi and fantasy imprint Tor and thriller publisher Forge can be read on any device, as well as shared—one reason their AN E-BOOK OF ONE’S OWN: Readers of digital tomes from Tom Doherty’s Tor/Forge Books will be able to share them just like regular books. tech-savvy readers and authors have been pushing the change for years. Going DRM-free may also help loosen the grip of Amazon, the giant retailer and rapidly expanding publisher. Rather than being locked into the Kindle platform, Kindle owners will be able to buy Tor’s new John Scalzi novel, for instance, at Tor.com, not at Amazon. The moves are part of the book industry’s ongoing efforts to harness the very technologies that imperil it. Like all publishers,Tor needs to find new ways to connect with consumers outside of the shrinking number of brick-and-mortar bookstores, long the place where readers serendipitously discovered new authors and titles. The Tor bookstore, announced See E-BOOKSTORE on Page 43 by Aaron Elstein Let’s talk capital markets. Advisors who combine industry-speciﬁc experience with deep insight into today’s complex capital markets. If that’s what you’re looking for in an accounting ﬁrm, talk to J.H. Cohn. M Danger: Moneymarket fund runs buck ennis oney-market funds rank as one of Wall Street’s most successful services ever. Between 1990 and 2008, the amount parked in these funds soared to nearly $4 trillion, from $100 million, as investors large and small flocked to funds that offered substantially higher returns than banks could offer. The funds marketed themselves as every bit as safe a place for savers to park their cash as banks, but the reason they could offer those higher yields was because they didn’t pay for government deposit insurance, as banks do. It was a remarkable feat of dodging regulations that worked wonderfully until September 2008, when a large fund wrote down a huge investment in Lehman Brothers debt, forcing investors to swallow losses and in the process turning a nasty crisis involving a few big banks into a global Unless they are reformed, they can still “transform a moderate financial shock into a destabilizing run.” Ms. Schapiro’s chief suggestion is to allow the net asset values of these funds to float, rather than be stuck at the sacrosanct $1 a share. But that undermines their chief marketing plank (it’s hard to market safety and security when the fund’s share price bounces around). So it’s no surprise that the moneyfund industry, led by giants Fidelity and JPMorgan Chase, dislikes Ms. Schapiro’s proposals. A report last week by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned that shrinking the money-market fund business could result in higher borrowing costs for corporations and governments. Still, if money-market funds want to promote safety and security, they need to pay for the government guarantee, as banks do. What Ms. Schapiro is saying is that the free ride is over. Here’s hoping she sticks to her guns. We turn expertise into results. Joe Torre Dom Esposito, Capital Markets Strategy panic involving all financial institutions. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro recently served up new details showing how fragile these seemingly super-secure funds really are. In testimony before Congress, Ms. Schapiro disclosed that more than 100 money-market funds had to be bailed out in the postLehman cataclysm by the financial institutions that own them.Indeed, owners have had to prop up money-market funds more than 300 times since they were created in the early 1970s. (The fund industry disputes Ms. Schapiro’s data concerning bailouts.) There were tremors again last summer, when savers yanked $100 billion out of the funds over a three-week stretch starting in June, Ms. Schapiro said. The funds,which now hold $2.5 trillion, “still remain susceptible to investor runs with potential systemic impacts on the financial system,” Ms. Schapiro told Congress. 877.704.3500 jhcohn.com N e w Yo r k . N e w J e r s e y . C o n n e c t i c u t . M a s s a c h u s e t t s . C a l i f o r n i a -44% YEAR-TO-DATE DECLINE in U.S. corporate mergers and acquisitions, according to Thomson Reuters. It’s the slowest first half of the year for Wall Street dealmakers since 2003. 4 | Crain’s New York Business | June 25, 2012 ap/ wide world photos http://www.jhcohn.com http://www.jhcohn.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Crains New York - June 25, 2012

Crains New York - June 25, 2012
Contents
In the Boroughs
In the Markets
The Insider
Business People
Alair Townsend
Greg David
Real Estate Deals
Crain’s Fast 50
For the Record
Classifieds
New York, New York
Source Lunch
Out and About

Crains New York - June 25, 2012