Archives for August 2007

Big Opening for YA Vampire Novel The WSJ says that Stephanie Meyer’s YA vampire novel ECLIPSE sold 150,000 copies on its opening day on sale earlier this week, prompting Steve Riggio to comment: “We were anticipating the book would be very big, but it has exceeded our expectations. As booksellers, we’re thrilled.” BN alone reports selling 50,000 copies in the first two days on sale. The first two books in the series are said to have 1.6 million copies in print. Little, Brown was looking for a big opening, but they were projecting 40,000 copies. Publisher Megan Tingely says, “I’ve […]

Harper Finishes Year Well Harper returned to profitability in their fiscal fourth quarter, with earnings of $21 million (versus a loss of $6 million a year ago) on sales of $295 million — up 15 percent from $256 million a year ago. For the full year, the company’s long string of annual earnings increases came to an end, with operating income of $159 million down $8 million from the previous year, even as sales hit a new high of $1.347 billion, up 2.7 percent. News Corp. Release In other corporate report cards, fast-growing Quercus announced mounting losses of 341,000 pounds […]

Starbucks’ Holiday Pick Starbucks has selected LISTENING IS AN ACT OF LOVE – A Celebration of American Lives from the StoryCorps Project, edited by Dave Isay, as their next book selection. They’ll begin selling the Penguin Press book and accompanying CD, comprising 50 stories from everyday Americans, on November 8. Ford to HBG USA and More Personnel News Beth Ford will join the Hachette Book Group in the US as chief operating officer and evp in late September, reporting to ceo David Young. He notes in the announcement, “With the retirement of both Maureen Egen and Rick Hall earlier this […]

Amazon Taps Customers for Pre-Pub Reviews Amazon Vine, a new program launching on August 15, will emulate the pilot program at LibraryThing we mentioned earlier this summer, matching “new and pre-release products” — like books, music and movies — with some of the site’s customer/reviewers, providing a new type of pre-publication review. The company will invite customers — called Voices (which mangles the grapevine metaphor) to participate in the program by e-mail, “based on the trust they have earned in the Amazon community for writing accurate and insightful reviews.” Also, on Friday the e-tailer confirmed the beta launch of their […]

Deal Reports Just e-mail to deals@PublishersMarketplace if you aren’t using the online form linked below. Report a deal using the online form The Key As usual, the handy key to our Lunch deal categories. While all reports are always welcome, those that include a category will generally receive a higher listing when it comes time to put them all together. “nice deal” $1 – $49,000 “very nice deal” $50,000 – $99,000 “good deal” $100,000 – $250,000 “significant deal” $251,000 – $499,000 “major deal” $500,000 and up   FICTION Debut Chris Ver Wiel’s STARBUCKS NATION, a satire of coffee-swilling, celebrity-obsessed Southern […]

Judge Sides with CIA A federal judge ruled in favor of the CIA in Valerie Plame and Simon & Schuster’s suit over her forthcoming manuscript. Judge Barbara S. Jones said that the information about how long Plame worked for the agency “was properly classified, was never declassified and has not been officially acknowledged by the CIA.” The judge acknowledges that the agency “does not contest that the information is, in fact, in the public domain” and that “the public may draw whatever conclusions it might from the fact that the information at issue was sent on CIA letterhead by the […]