Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will publish The Legend of of Sigurd and Gudrun, “a thorough reworking in verse of old Norse epics” that predates The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, in May. AP
Archives for February 2009
Atwood Drops Out of Dubai Festival
Margaret Atwood has pulled out of the Emirates Airline International Festival for Literature in the wake of the fair’s decision to cancel the launch of Geraldine Bedell’s The Gulf Between Us because of the inclusion of a gay character. Other authors due to appear at the festival, including bestselling children’s authors Anthony Horowitz and Lauren Child, are now also reconsidering whether to attend. Atwood, a vice president of International PEN, has written to the festival’s director about the “regrettable turn of events” surrounding Geraldine Bedell’s The Gulf Between Us. “I was greatly looking forward to the festival, and to the […]
Announcements
Wiley-Blackwell has partnered with the American Physiological Society to produce Physiology Online, an evolving compendium of current knowledge of all aspects of the field. The publication will be launched online in January 2010 Featherproof Books is launching a subscription-based imprint called Paper Egg Books, which will determine print runs of its titles by the number of subscribers who sign up for the program at $20/year. The sixth annual LBF Lifetime Achievement Award in International Publishing will be awarded to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt editor Drenka Willen. BEA has lowered the hotel rates for the 2009 convention, with most nightly rates dropping […]
People
At Faber, Hannah Griffiths, formerly Head of Paperback Publishing, has been appointed Director of Paperback Publishing, and Sarah Savitt, formerly Paperbacks Manager, has been promoted to Editor. Phillip Wagner has been appointed the new CEO of BCA effective immediately, replacing George Saul, who left the company last week. Most recently Wagner worked with Aurelius, which bought BCA at the end of 2008. Sudanese novelist Tayeb Salih, best known for his 1966 novel Season of Migration to the North, died in London Wednesday aged around 80.Reuters Bram Cavin, a longtime book editor with Macmillan, Doubleday and Prentice-Hall, died on February 14 […]
S&P Downgrades B&N Shares
Standard & Poor has downgraded Barnes & Noble stock from “hold” to “strong sell”, noting that B&N shares “have risen about 40% over the past 3 months and are now trading well above” S&P’s target price. The firm also expects further weakening in sales over the next fiscal year and is “also concerned by the long-term trend of declining adult readership levels.” B&N’s Board of Directors also declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.25 per share, payable on March 31 to stockholders of record at the close of business on March 10.Business Week
Amazon's Credit Upgraded; Kindle Expansion Hitch
S&P also bumped up Amazon’s credit rating one notch to ‘BBB-‘ from ‘BB+’, citing the company’s “strong brand, robust performance, and improved credit-protection metrics” during a “difficult retail environment.” In other Amazon news, Mark Bertils puts the lack of Kindle availability in Canada, the UK, and other territories squarely on the shoulder of Jasper Wireless, which is Amazon’s direct wireless partner, not Sprint: “I am willing to bet that Amazon’s contract with Jasper is exclusive. For the Kindle to grow, Jasper has to grow. And the MVNO market is dead everywhere but in the US and Jasper’s specialty — machine-to-machine […]