Archives for February 2008

Oprah Sells Tolle at Record Pace Following Oprah’s enthusiastic endorsement Eckhart Tolle’s A NEW EARTH has added another 3.45 million copies in print, “the record for the most copies ever shipped by Penguin Group USA in a four-week period.” That’s on top of an initial shipment of 776,000 copies in advance of the Oprah announcement. BN buyer Jules Herbert says “for the first four weeks on sale [it] is our bestselling Oprah’s Book Club title.” The publisher says over 500,000 people have registered for the 10-week webinar that begins next Monday night. LAT Nominees The paper announced the nominees for […]

Virgin USA in Flux Founding publisher of Virgin Books USA Ken Siman has resigned his permanent position to become a consultant to the business. He will continue to edit and publicize the books that he has acquired. The line, distributed by Holtzbrinck, was put in an odd position from the start after Random House UK purchased Virgin Books in March 2007, before the US division had begun publishing. Random UK’s Richard Cable says they are “absolutely committed to Virgin Books USA.” He adds, “We are currently talking to a number of parties and considering how to best structure the US […]

More Free Book Fever: Now BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN Charles Bock’s debut novel BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN is being offered as a free PDF download via www.beautifulchildren.net/read, starting last night and running through midnight this Friday. (Sharing, emailing and printing are all allowed.) The free file is also available online via Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com, Powells.com and Northshire.com. Bock says in the announcement, “I want people to read the book. If that means giving it away for free on-line, great.” Random’s deputy director of marketing Avideh Bashirrad adds, “The book really struck a chord with readers as bookstore sales have demonstrated. We believe it […]

Sales and Profits Slide at S&S Sales fell four percent in the fourth quarter at Simon & Schuster to $252.5 million as operating income dropped 26 percent to $27 million. The company says “best-selling titles… did not match contributions from prior year titles.” while the profit drop is attributed to “the decline in revenues and higher employee-related and digital archive costs.” For the full year, though, sales were up 10 percent, at $886 million and profits were up 29 percent at $88 million, improved in part by “lower bad debt expense.” Release Follett Buys Varsity, Cheap Follett has agreed to […]

RH Buys Monacelli This morning Random House announced the acquisition earlier this month of visual arts book publisher The Monacelli Press. Founded in 1994, Monacelli has published over 250 books on architecture, the fine arts, interior design, landscape architecture, photography, and graphic design. Monacelli will be an independent imprint within Random House, separate from the company’s other divisions, run by publisher and founder Gianfranco Monacelli. The staff will relocate to Random’s Manhattan headquarters, and the company will take over sales and distribution from Penguin as of July 1. Monacelli will report to RH deputy chairman Edward Volini, who says in […]