Following the success of their line of Poetry Speaks books, Sourcebooks is moving to dominate–and more importantly grow–the poetry “vertical” with their PoetrySpeaks.com web site. While the beta version of the site has just launched, it represents over five years of development work and an estimated $250,000 of investment from Sourcebooks. As ceo Dominique Raccah says, “When I did Poetry Speaks [the book] I honestly didn’t know if I was going to sell 2,000, 20,000 or 200,000 copies. What I see as an entrepreneur is that engagement drives sales. And if we get people excited and participating, we’ll find a […]
Archives for November 2009
Lulu Adds An eBook Store—with Real Authors
Lulu.com announced in a press release the addition to their site on an ebook store they say features over 200,000 titles from mainstream publishers and authors. While the company hopes to sell some of those titles to its site visitors, they are also clearing hoping to use the established titles as bait to attract more self-publishing customers–already said to be producing “nearly 15,000 new titles a month.” Sic. On the site, Lulu says that for self-publishing customers, on a $13.99 ebook they will pay the creator $10 per title sold. On titles from other publishers, they appear to sometimes offer […]
Simon & Schuster Launches Their Own Electronic Galley Program
Simon & Schuster has expanded and remade the experimental GalleyGrab.com site they used earlier this year to elicit interest in pre-BEA physical galleys into their own electronic galley service for “reviewers and media, booksellers, and other key publishing trade contacts.” The service works on most non-Kindle electronic reading platforms, from Sony Reader and nook to computers–using Adobe Digital Editions and its DRM. And the electronic galleys “will expire on the book’s publication date.” Access is provided by “invitation”–S&S staff will send links to particular electronic galleys to selected contacts. The program begins with a galley of Free Press’s march release, […]
Another Good Quarter for Harlequin
Harlequin continues to outshine parent company Torstar’s other assets as the book publisher turned in another positive quarter even as overall results at Torstar declined. Harlequin reported sales of $122.5 million (Ca), up 3.7 percent from a year ago, though most of the growth was due to a stronger Canadian dollar. The company says “growth in North America direct-to-consumer and overseas revenues more than offset declines in North America retail.” Operating profits rose 22 percent to $22.9 million, with almost half the gain coming from foreign exchange. Torstar says “at Harlequin, we anticipate stable results in the fourth quarter including […]
Bookselling: Borders Will Ship It If They Don't Have It; Leading Australian Chains May Go Public
We’ve always wondered why any (and every) bookstore–chain or indie–doesn’t offer to ship you for free any book that is not in stock. After all, in an internet-everywhere age, customers know they can go to any browser and accomplish the same thing. But Borders appears to be the first to figure this out, announcing today a “promise to customers that if they do not find an item in stock in a Borders store, and that item is among the more than one million titles available on Borders.com, Borders will find it and pay the shipping costs to the customer’s home.” […]
Internet Archive Experiments with Online Scan-and-Lend
The Internet Archive’s expansive ambition for their recently-introduced Bookserver continues to cause a range of excitement and confusion depending upon whom you speak to, in part because the scheme is in its very early stages. A profile of Archive founder Brewster Kahle in the new issue of Forbes magazine, titled Lend Ho!, tipped us to yet another aspect of their intentions: “Kahle hopes libraries will use the new Bookserver technology to scan and electronically lend orphans. Kahle reasons that libraries can scan and electronically lend their orphans without violating any laws, just as they lend those volumes today…. It also […]