The Palingates blog and then Gawker have posted pre-publication excerpts from Sarah Palin’s Tuesday release, AMERICA BY HEART. Gawker appears to be trying a new way around copyright infringement charges by posting pictures of book spreads. In all they have complete replicas of 21 pages, from a title that’s listed as running 304 pages in all. Palin herself tweeted yesterday, “The publishing world is leaking out-of-context excerpts of my book w/out my permission? Isn’t that illegal?” HarperCollins did not respond to a query as to whether the company was pursuing legal action over the excerpts. Run-on coverage has focused mostly […]
Archives for November 2010
People
Vintage/Anchor publicist and bestselling author Sloane Crosley will leave her position next month after nine years at Random House to write full-time. She tells the NYT: “When it comes to book publishing, my colleagues are the most passionate people I have ever encountered outside of clinically insane religious zealots. I thank them for their boundless support both inside the office and out.” Author, editorial director of Brandon Books, and former president of the Irish Book Publishers Association Steve MacDonogh of Brandon Books, 62, died suddenly. The D4EO Literary Agency has selected the Taryn Fagerness Agency to handle foreign rights for […]
eNews: Staples Reports “Very Good” Kindle Sales; Kindle Adds eBook Gifting; and More
In discussing quarterly earnings with analysts yesterday, Staples president of US stores Demos Parneros said he is “really excited about our launch of Kindle. It’s in all our stores and has been received very well. We’ve had very good sales on Kindle.” Looking forward, he said “December is going to be a big month for the Reader category. There is also some good innovation in the category. There have been several new products, bigger products in terms of size, different form factors. So we expect our good relationship to continue and to build that business.” He says they also “are […]
Comps Down 5.8 Percent at Books-a-Million
Books-A-Million reported sales for the third quarter of $104.8 million, down 5.5 percent overall, with same-store sales down 5.8 percent. Their net loss rose to $1.7 million, $100,000 larger than this time a year ago. Like other book retailers, they are reporting weakness in hardcovers (whether due to the economy, ebooks, or both) and strength in bargain books. CEO Clyde Anderson said in the release, “Comparable store sales for the third quarter were disappointing as we faced a tough comparison to last year’s bestseller lineup and a cost conscious consumer buying fewer hardcover books. We did see continued positive trends […]
Copia Says
New service Copia says via spokesperson Trey Ditto that we got everything wrong yesterday. Ditto declined to tell us what the large “Windows Phone 7” header and logo means on their “apps & readers” page–but it does not mean that Copia is available on that platform. And we have now learned that you can get to their estore with one less click than described yesterday, as long as you know that “catalog” in the top banner strip means “store.” The company told PW yesterday that they have canceled plans to create and sell their own ereading devices (they had already […]
eNews Round-Up: S&S Wins Catch-22; HMH Offers Saramago eBundle; Nook en Espanol; Kobo Creates eBook Gifting; WH Smith Restores Some Agency Titles; Lagardere/Google Agreement Could Be a “Framework” for Others; Amazon Buys Toby Press List (Phew)
– Simon & Schuster has successfully negotiated terms with the Joseph Heller estate and agent Amanda Urban at ICM to issue an ebook version of the classic novel CATCH-22. Start-up Open Road had said a year ago that they would be publishing the title as an ebook, but that announcement was made prior to execution of a contract (unlike the William Styron and Pat Conroy licenses announced at the same time). S&S publisher Jon Karp tells the AP, “we both realized the benefits of coming to terms sooner rather than later, and happily we did.” Open Road spokesman Josh Raffel […]