The WSJ looks at Rick Richter’s Ruckus Media and other children’s book app initiatives. Richter estimates the cost of creating each app at between $12,000 and $30,000, and says they have 75 titles under contract, including a deal with Jon Scieszka–who says “I think that what we’ll find in the new app world is that the original stuff will really fly,”WSJ Scribner is the latest publisher to take a crack at selling short works for 99 cents, offering 69 essays by Chuck Klosterman, “almost all” of which have appeared in books already. They are also offering six thematic collections of […]
Archives for September 2010
New DFW Set for Tax Day Release
Little, Brown announced that David Foster Wallace’s posthumous unfinished novel THE PALE KING will be published April 15, 2011. The book is set at an IRS tax-return-processing center in Illinois, and agent Bonnie Nadell observes it “may be the first novel to make accountants and IRS agents into heroes.” The just-released jacket was created by his widow Karen Green, a painter and visual artist. The publisher plans to convene events on the release day and will help bookstores “link up with local writers to lead readings and discussions of The Pale King and to celebrate David Wallace.”
Proxy Fight Today
Bank of America/Merrill Lynch downgraded their outlook on Barnes & Noble shares from neutral to underperform “on uncertainty surrounding the company’s digital initiatives and a deteriorating balance sheet,” setting a price target of $13 a share. A WSJ piece of a number of ongoing shareholder battles suggests that in the pending Barnes & Noble vote, “a recommendation by influential proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. will be crucial, and both sides have been lobbying the firm in recent weeks.”WSJ
Bookselling: Two Closings, One Opening
Borders is closing their store in Miami-area Aventura next month, even though “locals will tell you [it] always seems crowded” according to the local NBC station. “A Borders spokesperson told us on the phone from the company’s headquarters in Michigan that the Aventura store just wasn’t making enough money to justify keeping it open, especially with rents for such a large space as high as they are for a prime location on Biscayne Boulevard.” Owner of the area’s Books and Books Mitchell Kaplan remarks, “It’s a very precarious marketplace right now for all bookstores and for publishers as well.” He […]
Only In Europe? 2004 Sale of Parts of Editis to Wendel Is Declared Illegal
This one is a bit of a head scratcher. A European Court has struck down a 2004 European Commission decision that had allowed investment group Wendel to buy part of the Editis publishing assets for 660 million euros as part of Lagardere’s acquisition of Editis. At the same time, the court affirmed that Lagardere’s purchase of Editis was acceptable. They said the trustee who oversaw the report on Wendel’s purchase was not sufficiently independent. “The establishment of this illegality is such as to vitiate the lawfulness of the approval decision.” It’s not exactly clear what happens next. Reuters says “the […]
Obama Children’s Book Set for November 16
President Obama has written a children’s book, OF THEE I SING: A Letter to My Daughters, which Knopf Children’s will publish on November 16 with an announced 500,000-copy first printing. Illustrated by Loren Long, the book profiles 13 “groundbreaking Americans and the ideals that have shaped our nation–from the artistry of Georgia O’Keeffe, to the courage of Jackie Robinson, to the patriotism of George Washington.” The book was both sold (as part of his deal with Crown and Knopf Children’s in 2004) and written before Obama took office in 2009. Proceeds from the sale will be donated to a scholarship […]