At Atlantic Books, Margaret Stead will join the company in late April as editorial director. She was previously editorial director of The Harvill Press. Current editorial director Caroline Knight has resigned, by will continue to work for the company after relocating to Kent. Barnes & Noble announced the winners of the 2009 Discover Great New Writers awards: Playwright Victor Lodato‘s debut novel MATHILDA SAVITCH (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), and Dave Cullen‘s COLUMBINE (Twelve). Daniyal Mueenuddin won The Story Prize for his collection In Other Rooms, Other Wonders. Chicago’s citywide reading program is still going strong, naming Colm Tobin‘s BROOKLYN as […]
Archives for March 2010
Profits Rise at Harlequin As Currency Holds Down Sales
Harlequin’s parent company Torstar reported that the publishing unit had fourth quarter sales of $122 million (CA), down three percent from last year, but EBITDA jumped to $21.7 million, almost 40 percent higher than the $15.6 million a year ago. (And yes, that gives them EBITDA margin of of 17.8 percent.) They say “underlying” sales rose $2.6 million, while the strengthening Canadian dollar cost them $6.6 million. For the full year, sales of $493 million were up 4.3 percent over the previous year. EBITDA for the year was $88.2 million, up 22 percent.Release
Penguin's Makinson Demonstrates iPad Adaptations
Yesterday Penguin Group ceo John Makinson presented more of the company’s vision of how to present books on the iPad platform at conference. There vision is that they “will be embedding streaming audio, video and gaming into everything that we do.” Which means they are forsaking epub, which “is designed for narrative text but not this cool stuff that we’re talking about now” and “for the time being at least we’ll be creating a lot of our content as applications.” Makinson freely admitted that “we don’t understand at the moment what the consumer is prepared to pay for. We don’t […]
More eNews: iBooks Will Go International Once they Hire; Bloomsbury Expands Online Library, and More
* So far Apple has said the iBookstore and iBooks app will launch in the US only. But a company job listing has been spotted online seeking a manager “responsible for launching and growing the iBook business in Asia Pacific [later detailed as Australia, New Zealand and other countries] and Canada and building an extensive offering for customers.”Listing * In the UK, Bloomsbury has expanded their online library project and renamed it the Public Library Online, reflecting the new inclusion of books from other publishers. Joining them are Faber, Quercus, Canongate and Allison & Busby, “with more coming soon.” Built […]
People, Etc.
Alex Littlefield has joined Basic Books as associate editor. He was assistant editor at Grove/Atlantic. Anna Termine has been promoted to senior licensing manager at Sage Publications and Corwin Press. She has been at the company for six years. According to SF Weekly, former San Francisco Chronicle books editor Oscar Villalon has “abruptly exited” his position as publisher at McSweeney’s after joining the company last September. Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus author John Gray will publish his next book himself on May 1 through his Mind Publishing, Inc. Called VENUS ON FIRE, MARS ON ICE: Hormonal Balance […]
eBook Pricing: The Feedback Loop
Macmillan ceo John Sargent’s blog post from yesterday has drawn over 50 comments, spanning the typical online range from reasonable to ranting. Importantly, Sargent has posted back twice, indicating: “Thanks for the comments. I’ll get back to you as time allows. I’ll also try to gather groups of questions that indicate I have not been clear enough and answer them in my next post.” A number of posters don’t fully understand that the new pricing has not begun yet, even though the original piece indicates things will change “starting at the end of March,” and ask about the publisher’s historically […]