Managing director of De Fontein/Tirion in Holland Geneviève Waldmann will also runs VBK’s Kosmos as of October 1, though both houses “will maintain their separate identities.” Later this year De Fontein/Tirion will relocate to Utrecht to join with Kosmos physically. Senior publicity manager at William Morrow Jennifer Slattery has left her position to travel to Australia for the next 6 months. Judith Merkle Riley, author of six historical novels (Vision of Light, In Pursuit of the Green Lion, The Water Devil, The Oracle Glass, The Serpent Garden and The Master of All Desires) and a professor of political science at […]
Archives for September 2010
New Books: Summers, and More 39 Clues
When Lawrence Summers leaves his position as director of the National Economic Council and returns to Cambridge at the beginning of next year, he is expected to start work right away on the first of two books he owes Farrar, Straus. Summers made a deal with Farrar in 2007 for books on education and economics. Originally planning to begin with the education book (following his controversial tenure as president of Harvard), the publisher tells us that he will now write about economics first. Scholastic announced a new version of their 39 Clues franchise, The 39 Clues; Cahills vs. Vespers. The […]
Bringing Lightning to Australia
Australia’s splendid isolation from Amazon and industry-wide print on demand will start to crack when Lightning Source opens a “full-scale” POD facility there in June 2011. Lightning Source already has an operations in the UK and is in a joint venture in France with Hachette.
Bookselling: BAM Enters Used-Media Market, New Owners in Wellesley, and More
Books-a-Million is preparing to open a new store format shortly under the banner 2nd & Charles in Birmingham, the Birmingham Business Journal report. The company would only say that “details would be revealed later this week.” But the paper’s sources say that the new store will sell used books, movies, music, and computer games.Article The Wellesley Booksmith is being bought from Marshall Smith by area resident Gillian Kohli and her husband Bill Kohli, a portfolio manager at Putnam Investments.Globe Unique Books in Bayonne, NY is closing next month after seven years in business.Jersey Journal
Trade Sales Rise at Scholastic, But Overall Results Decline for First Quarter
Sales at Scholastic fell $24.7 million or 8 percent, at $290.9 million for their fiscal first quarter, and the operating loss (before interest and taxes) was $46.8 million, 33 percent higher than a year ago. In their children’s book and publishing division, sales of $72.8 million were down 3.4 percent, with an operating loss of $51.6 million. But Scholastic says trade sales rose 9 percent, thanks in part to Suzanne Collins, while expenses reflected “the planned increase in spending on digital initiatives.” The company says Scholastic Education revenue suffered from comparisons to last year, when they “benefited significantly from the […]
Books In the News: NYT Breaks Woodward, Questions for Betancourt
The NYT “obtained” an embargoed copy of Bob Woodward’s OBAMA’S WARS in advance of next week’s release–and serialization in the Washington Post. The Times leads with the theme that some of President Obama’s national security team has doubted his Afghanistan strategy and “spent much of the last 20 months quarreling with one another over policy, personalities and turf.” The Post followed with their own story, emphasizing even more explicitly than the Times that Obama wanted “to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan” rather than triple troop levels, “repeatedly pressing his top military advisers for an exit plan that […]