Mediagazer: Blackstrap will turn your Pocket or Instapaper articles into a $15 print book (Laura Hazard Owen/paidContent)

1:20 PM ET, April 11, 2013

Top News:

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Ebooks made up 23 percent of US publisher sales in 2012, says the AAP — Ebooks accounted for nearly a quarter of the U.S. trade book business in 2012, according to statistics released Thursday by the Association of American Publishers. The ebook industry appears to be maturing, however …

Discussion: PublishersWeekly.com and Digital Book World

Eric Mark Do / MediaShift:

Toronto Star Tests Monthly E-Book Subscriptions — The Toronto Star is testing the e-book market with a dedicated subscription model. Launched in November 2012, Star Dispatches is the brainchild of the Toronto Star's marketing department. The Star already has more than 20 titles …

Discussion: @jeffsonderman

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

AOL Confirms Ned Brody Has Resigned As Head Of AOL Networks, CEO Armstrong Takes Over In The Interim [Memo] — Some turmoil in the management ranks at AOL, with Yahoo, apparently, hoping to profit as part of its ongoing hiring spree. AOL (which owns TechCrunch) has confirmed to us that Ned Brody …

Discussion: AllThingsD, AdAge, FishbowlNY, MinOnline, Business Insider and SlashGear

Sue Marek / FierceWireless:

Verizon CEO: 50% of our wireless traffic is video — LAS VEGAS—Video accounts for 50 percent of Verizon Wireless' (NYSE:VZ) network traffic today and by 2017 the carrier estimates video will make up two-thirds of all traffic over the network. Speaking at the National Association …

Discussion: ZDNet, The Verge, Business Insider, App Advice, MacRumors, SlashGear, 9to5Mac, AppleInsider, GigaOM and Softpedia News

Brooke Sutherland / Bloomberg:

Dish Deals Made Possible by Exxon-Like Cash: Real M&A — Dish Network Corp. (DISH) Chairman Charlie Ergen has accumulated a record $10 billion in cash, leaving investors to speculate whether he's setting his sights on a takeover of T-Mobile USA Inc. or a merger with rival DirecTV.

Discussion: Denver Business Journal, dailywireless.org and FierceWireless

Jackie Spinner / American Journalism Review:

Launching a Startup in Iraq — When ExxonMobil hired a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq as a consultant on its oil business there, an upstart news service broke the story. The February disclosure was the second major scoop involving Exxon for 32-year-old Ben Lando, who founded the Web-based Iraq Oil Report …

Dylan Byers / Politico:

USA Today revises ‘illegal immigrant’ use — On the heels of the Associated Press's decision to drop the term, “illegal immigrant,” USA Today has announced that it too will no longer be using the term, except when it appears within quotation marks. — “Starting tonight, USA TODAY is also changing its style.

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Blackstrap will turn your Pocket or Instapaper articles into a $15 print book — A new site called Blackstrap will let you turn the articles you've saved on Instapaper, Pocket or Twitter into a $15 printed book. But does anybody actually need this service?

Jack Marshall / Digiday:

The Web's Worst Ad Clutter Offenders — Web advertising is a volume game, an arms race to ward off declining CPM prices. The way to combat that: create more Ms. — Web publishers talk a big game about cleaner, less cluttered sites, but when push comes to shove, they look to cram as many ad pixels as they can on pages.

Discussion: MarketingVox News & Trends

Harrison Weber / The Next Web:

Spotify Eyes Asia & Americas Expansion, Adding Traditional Chinese & Latin American Spanish To Its iOS App — Following the global roll-out of its Follow tab on the desktop, Spotify has released an update to its iOS app, adding support for Latin American Spanish and Traditional Chinese.

Loes Witschge / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Getting personal: A Dutch online news platform wants you to subscribe to individual journalists — “It's my own little shop, that's what I like about it. You decide what goes in — like having your own newspaper.” — Arnold Karskens has his own channel on Dutch news startup De Nieuwe Pers (The New Press).

Discussion: The Dish

Jasper Jackson / TheMediaBriefing:

UBM Tech shuts print titles to focus on events and digital communities — UBM's technology division is shutting its print magazines and focusing on community websites, as part of a new reorganisation that will reportedly see more than 100 staff roles eliminated.

Georg Szalai / Hollywood Reporter:

BBC Publishes Contract of New Director General to Improve Transparency — In a first, the U.K. public broadcaster details Tony Hall's employment deal, which includes a shorter notice period. — The BBC Trust on Wednesday published the full employment contract of Tony Hall …

Discussion: The Drum, Daily Mail, The Times, Telegraph, Guardian and BBC Trust