Mary Ellen O’Neill is joining Workman Publishing as a senior editor. Most recently she was publisher of Collins Lifestyle and editorial director of cookbooks/executive editor at Morrow. Cynthia Zigmund is now representing authors exclusively through her own company, Second City Publishing Services. Tamson Weston has left Disney-Hyperion to found Tamson Weston Books, an editorial consultancy. She will be working with agents and publishers to develop book projects and help new authors fine-tune manuscripts, proposals and picture book dummies. As of February Susan Sandérus will join Bruna in the Netherlands as commissioning editor. She has been at Fontein Publishers and worked […]
Archives for January 2011
The Year In Sales: Print Sales Decline Less Than eBooks Gained, As Retail Market Share Is Hit
Many in the trade were feeling relatively positive about business trends at the end of the year until the Borders news broke. For the 51 weeks of book sales, through Sunday, December 26, print book sales as tracked by Nielsen BookScan were down 4.4 percent overall. (The comparable reporting period from 2009 ran through December 27.) With ebook sales at the major reporting houses rising from roughly 3 percent a year ago to approximately 9 percent or more in dollars (and likely even more by units) by the end of this year it’s likely that the decline in print sales […]
eNews and More: FiledBy Works With Ingram; Johnson eBook; More Kindle Tablet Apps; and Kaplan’s Free Promotion
FiledBy is providing author-generated book information to the Ingram Content Group to populate their title databases including iPage. As part of the agreement, Ingram will also stream book and author data to FiledBy for inclusion on their website. Ingram Chief Content Officer Phil Ollila says, “Our work with FiledBy will give us an additional source to obtain the most up-to-date and accurate bibliographic data for books in our database.” Putnam has released Spencer Johnson’s longtime bestseller Who Moved My Cheese?, first published in 1998, as an ebook today. Amazon confirmed today that they will support all of those new Android […]
Borders Counsel Carney and CIO Laverty Both Resign; Ingram Says They Will Keep Shipping
Just as Borders is preparing for complex negotiations with vendors and lenders, they will be doing so without the assistance of EVP, general counsel Thomas Carney, who has served as the bookseller’s top attorney since 1994. He resigned on Sunday, noted by Borders in a terse SEC filing after the close of the market yesterday. SVP, chief information officer Scott Laverty resigned as well, on Monday. Laverty joined the company in May 2009, charged with overseeing the “overall vision, strategic direction and tactical execution of all information technology systems and solutions.” Spokesperson passes along the company’s statement: “As previously reported, we are […]
People, Etc.
Kimberley Cameron and Associates announces that they agency has amicably parted ways with April Eberhardt, who established her own literary agency, effective January 1. April Eberhardt Literary will focus primarily on high-quality women’s fiction, and will also assist authors in assessing and accessing alternative publishing channels. Amy Rhodes has been named a partner in Market Partners International, where she has worked as a consultant for the last two years. Prior to joining MPI she had been publisher and general manager at Watson-Guptill, and trade publisher at Rodale Books. Liz Gately has been appointed the US scout for the UK’s Headline. In promotions […]
How Borders Negotiations’ Might Go
Last Friday Borders’ stock fell over 22 percent on the news of delayed payments to major vendors, taking share below the one dollar minimum required on a long-term basis for listing on the New York Stock Exchange. Borders spokesperson Mary Davis confirms our report from Thursday based on discussions with some of those vendors that the Borders executive team will be in New York this week to negotiate with the publishers whom they owe money. (While the company is in continuing discussions over replacement financing, Davis says this week’s New York meetings are focused on publishers only.) NBN head Jed […]