This time Borders has eliminated another 40 jobs from their Ann Arbor headquarters, and another 5 jobs at their distribution centers, announced on Monday. Spokesperson Mary Davis told the Detroit Free Press, “The realignment at the store support center encompasses nearly all business areas, including IT, human resources, finance and merchandising. This decision is a result of Borders’ focus on reducing costs and readjusting its business model to improve profitability and cash flow.” In better bookstore news, lobbying from Laredo, TX to entice a major bookstore to the city following the closure of their last new bookstore of scal, a B. […]
Archives for January 2011
Lunch Weekly for Monday, January 17
Deal Reports Just e-mail to deals@PublishersMarketplace if you aren’t using the online form linked below. Report a deal using the online form The Key As usual, the handy key to our Lunch deal categories. While all reports are always welcome, those that include a category will generally receive a higher listing when it comes time to put them all together. “nice deal” $1 – $49,000 “very nice deal” $50,000 – $99,000 “good deal” $100,000 – $250,000 “significant deal” $251,000 – $499,000 “major deal” $500,000 and up FICTION Debut Nora Zelevansky’s THE PFEFFERNOOSE CHRONICLES, a humorous and touching tale of […]
BISG E-Book ISBN Survey Shows Just How Much More Work Needs To Be Done
Last week the Book Industry Study Group held a meeting to review findings of a study conducted by Michael Cairns of Information Media Partners on how ISBNs are deployed with respect to e-books – or more specifically, how there is nowhere near a consistent standard or best practice for doing so. The full study will be available in a few weeks but Cairns has made the executive summary available at his blog Personanondata. Thanks to the proliferation of e-book formats and Amazon’s insistence on its own proprietary format, ASIN, the study finds that “the ISBN agency is virtually irrelevant to […]
People, Awards, Announcements
At Headline, Jonathan Taylor has been appointed Publishing Director for Non-Fiction, effective March 7. He will also join the Headline board. Previously he was Publishing Director for HarperCollins UK. Simon & Schuster announced that Jeffery Deaver’s contemporary-set James Bond novel, due to be published in May, will be titled CARTE BLANCHE and is set in Dubai.AP Two months after circulating the possibility that Bob Dylan was looking to move to Simon & Schuster for a new book deal, Crain’s New York reports the singer has done just that with a new six-book-contract.Crain’s Similarly, the Arthur Conan Doyle Estate has signed […]
On Borders: We Really Might Not Know Until Groundhog Day
In Friday’s Lunch we compared Borders’ presentation to publishers on Thursday as Groundhog Day–a repetition of the same basic plan they had been talking about since late December–and it also appears that there may not be a final decision on the bookseller’s fate until Groundhog Day itself, the rough deadline set by Borders. The WSJ adds the name of the law firm that is representing Borders in the restructuring talks (Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman), and provides an estimated amount for the new credit line under negotiation with GE and others: “$500 million or more.” That is considerably less than […]
Knopf Clarifies Lawrence Wright’s Upcoming Scientology Book
Numerous media reports have created a wave of confusion over author Lawrence Wright’s work-in-progress on the Church of Scientology and director and high-profile Scientology defector Paul Haggis. In a telephone interview on Friday, Wright’s longtime editor at Knopf, Ann Close, clarified several key points. Knopf purchased North American rights to the book from agent Andrew Wylie at The Wylie Agency in early October, prior to Frankfurt. But that sale was too late to be included in the agency’s Frankfurt catalog–which was the source for a Gawker post earlier this month, which claimed the book proposal was still being shopped, and […]