Hachette Book Group estimates that they sold 1.3 million copies of Stephenie Meyer’s BREAKING DAWN on Saturday. The company added a 500,000-copy reprint prior to publication, for 3.7 million copies in print. Borders announced that its stores and web site sold over 250,000 copies on opening day–“nearly 10 times what the retailer’s first-day sales were for Eclipse, the third book in the series.”Borders release
Archives for August 2008
This Week's Hot Titles?
The WSJ highlights three prominent releases this week–Andrew Davidson’s THE GARGOYLE; David Carr’s THE NIGHT OF THE GUN; and Ron Suskind’s THE WAY OF THE WORLD: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism (the biggest of the three by far, with an announced 500,000-copy first printing)–as a potential counterpoint to “the slumping book business.” Not a lot of statistical evidence there, but Gayle Shanks at Changing Hands in Tempe, Ariz., s”ays that sales of hardcover fiction at her 13,000-square-foot store are off sharply; she’s now offering a 20 percent discount on all fiction hardcover titles.”WSJ
Alexander Solzhenitsyn Dies at 89
His son Stepan Solzhenitsyn told the AP that the Nobel-winning author died late Sunday, “but declined further comment.”AP
Lunch Weekly for Monday, August 4
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 Ellen Horan’s 31 BOND STREET, interweaving fiction with actual events surrounding […]
Putting a Price on AbeBooks
TechVibes–where former ABE executive (and still director) Boris Wertz is also a director and investor–estimates a price tag for Amazon’s recent purchase of $90 million to $120 million: “According to the AbeBooks website, in 2007 they did $190 million in gross merchandise volume and had 13,500 bookseller members on their platform. Based on AbeBooks’ 13.5% combined commission/service fee and minimum monthly subscription fee of $25, AbeBooks’ revenue in 2007 was approximately $30 million. If you look at comparable online e-commerce businesses like eBay with a current market cap of $32 Billion and 2007 annual revenue of $7.6 Billion, it’s safe […]
Another Kindle Guess
If you did had a dollar for every reporter with an inside source who tells them how many Kindles have really sold, you’d at least be able to buy some Amazon stock. Now TechCrunch has decided their source isn’t playing them, and declares in a headline: “We know how many Kindles Amazon has sold…. 240,000 Kindles have been shipped since November, according to a source close to Amazon with direct knowledge of the numbers.” Not even a source at Amazon, but “close to Amazon.”TC