Archives for November 2005

BAM’s Loss Is As Expected Books-a-Million (BAM) lost under $1 million in their fiscal third quarter, a slight improvement over a year ago, on sales of $108 million, which were up just 0.6 percent on a same-store basis compared to a year ago. Ironically, though the company blamed the bad hurricane sales for weak performance when downgrading projections in late September, they still benefited from “insurance recoveries for three stores that were permanently damaged by hurricanes during last fiscal year.” BAM release BN Leads Big Chains for Third Quarter For their third quarter, Barnes & Noble slightly exceeded previous projections […]

Doubleday Gets Riverhead Duo, to Set Up New Division Cindy Spiegel and Julie Grau will leave Penguin’s Riverhead, where they have served as co-publishers since 2003 (and worked as editors since the imprint’s founding in 1995), to start a new division for Doubleday Broadway beginning on November 28. Both will hold the title of svp and publisher, but they will report to Doubleday Broadway editor-in-chief Bill Thomas. The line, expected to grow to comprise 30 hardcovers and 40 trade paperbacks annually, “will reflect their philosophy of publishing a focused mix of literary fiction and quality nonfiction titles that perform as […]

Amazon’s Newest Patent Play Amazon continues to be aggressive in defining and protecting intellectual property. The e-tailer was recently awarded a patent for many elements of encouraging and allowing customers to post online reviews, including the very process of using a Web site to fill out a review form. Internet News reports it also covers “encouraging consumers to write reviews of items they’ve purchased by determining the optimal times to send them e-mails or reminders,” and “in one embodiment of the patent, the system sends consumers a message inviting them to write a review in a predetermined amount of time […]

Please Note The timing/schedule of Lunch for the rest of this week is just plain up in the air right now. I’m headed to a conference on the future of publishing in Barcelona, by way of a quick business stop in London. Internet access and time to take advantage of it are both uncertain. Invoking our slogan of “except when not,” there will be some Lunches to come for sure, though possibly at unexpected times and not necessarily every day. News items and news links will likely to go to the PublishersMarketplace.com home page first — and deals, jobs, and […]

Last Day for Our Deals Deal You have just one more day to take advantage of our members-only twenty-five percent discount on our comprehensive printed compendium of over 3,000 deals for 2004, helpfully arranged by sub-category, price range and imprint, and cross-referenced by editor, agent, and more. Follow the link below for more information about the book (including downloadable PDF samples.) And make sure to use only the link below to qualify for this discount offer. Deal Book info and purchase http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/dealbookOffer.shtml If for some reason this has reached you even though you are not a paying member of PublishersMarketplace, […]

JAWBREAKER Set for End of Year Release In late October (after a second Federal Court filing earlier in the month), former CIA field commander Gary Bernsten and publisher Crown finalized clearances from the CIA’s Publications Review Board to issue JAWBREAKER on December 27, two months after originally scheduled. Crown executive editor Rick Horgan says, “We are going to publish the book with the redactions preserved,” with blacked-out text throughout the book where CIA approval was not granted, to make transparent to readers “all of the violence done to the manuscript.” (In the interest of readibility, places where multiple pages were […]