Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s trade and reference division has created a Digital Strategy and Planning Group, led by svp Cheryl Cramer Toto (who had been the company’s vp of development and planning, a job that included leading the integration of Harcourt and Houghton Mifflin). Under Toto are vp of digital content development David Jost, vp of digital business development David Langevin, and Sanj Kharbanda, who has been promoted to vp of digital market strategy. He “will identify unique market opportunities for Houghton digital content and develop and implement innovative consumer-facing programs.”
Yesterday the RAND Corporation announced they were lowering list price on their ebooks to $9.95 (bear in mind they are a non-profit research organization). Director of publications and creative services Jane Ryan said in the announcement, “Our costs are lower for e-books and we want to pass these savings on to the public. Given the timeliness of our research, we want to make our work quickly available on multiple platforms, including smart phones.” They currently have almost 900 titles available electronically.
Also yesterday, Amazon announced ship date for SuperKindle: June 10.
For more digital bits since that seems to be the theme of today’s Lunch, a group of David Foster Wallace fans have organized an “Infinite Summer” reading program online–already garnering media attention. They invite readers to “join endurance bibliophiles from around the web as we tackle and comment upon DFW’s masterwork over the summer of 2009. The festivities begin on June 21st and run through September 22nd.
Infinite