With Borders’ recent bankruptcy filing there’s has been a lot of renewed interest in how they–and we–got to where we are today. Which is pretty much what John Thompson chronicles in his recently-released book MERCHANTS OF CULTURE: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century. The new issue of Poets & Writers has a thorough and interesting interview with Thompson by Gabriel Cohen. The good news is that “This field, which looks to the outsider like a chaotic mess, actually has a structure and a dynamic to it.” Despite all the complaining, Thompson sees book publishing as an optimistic culture by […]
Archives for February 2011
eNews: PubIt Stats, BookRenter Funding, O’Reilly Stats
Barnes & Noble says that they have enrolled “more than 11,000 independent publishers and authors” in the self epublishing PubIt! program in four months, comprising 65,000 works. And they note that 35 PubIt! titles are currently among their top 200 ebooks. BN is also holding its first in-store event for PubIt! authors in their Santa Monica store (though the company never really leveraged their stores on behalf of iUniverse in the past).Release VCs still love online textbook rental companies. BookRenter has raised another $40 million in financing, a substantial boost on top of the $20 million raised previously. TechCrunch says […]
Bookselling and Beyond: Reporting Borders’ Sales?, Creditors Meeting, and Waterstone’s Cuts
Recently we reported on the significant year-over-year drop in print book sales for the first six sales weeks of 2011 through outlets measured by Nielsen Bookscan. So naturally we were wondering how people should expect the discounted book sales at the 200 stores that Borders intends to close to be reflected in the Bookscan data as those stores are liquidated. Borders told us the handling of data for those 200 stores was up to Nielsen; they, in turn, indicate that they will continue to report sales from all Borders Group stores as usual, including those that are in the process […]
Briefs: Kodansha and Dai Nippon Buy Vertical; Syracuse University Press Pulls Fictionalized Memoir; and More
Kodansha and Dai Nippon Printing announced they are buying nearly equal stakes in smaller Japanese publisher Vertical, for an undisclosed sum. Kodansha will own 46.7% of the company, and Dai Nippon will hold a 46% stake. In addition, current COO Yoshinobu Noma will succeed Sawako Noma as Kodansha CEO in April.Anime News Network Syracuse University Press will no longer print copies of Montclair State University professor Fawzia Afzal-Khan’s fictionalized memoir Lahore With Love: Growing Up With Girlfriends Pakistani Style, published last year, after receiving legal threats from a woman in Pakistan who says that a character is based on her […]
People, Etc.
Brian McLendon will join Twelve as associate publisher on March 7. He will be “responsible for orchestrating Twelve’s publicity and promotional strategies, and will have a vital role in evaluating projects for the imprint.” McLendon is currently deputy director of publicity at Ballantine Bantam Dell and an agent director of the Random House Speakers Bureau. Harlequin has announced a number of changes to its editorial department. Editorial Director of Harlequin Mills & Boon UK Karin Stoecker will retire on April 1 after 32 years with the company. Effective March 1, Glenda Howard, Tessa Shapcott and Birgit Davis-Todd have been promoted […]
In the UK In 2010, Book Sales and New Book Production Decline
New book production in the UK declined slightly in 2010 according to preliminary figures from Nielsen Book, remaining robust at 151,969 titles. That is a 3.2 decline from 2009’s final count of 157,039 titles, and still the second-highest total recorded. (Nielsen notes that in 2009, the final count was considerably higher than the preliminary tally.) Overall sales volume as measured by Nielsen BookScan UK’s total consumer market tabulation puts UK book sales for 2010 at 229.3 million units (down 2.7 percent) and 1.72 billion pounds in consumer revenues (down 1.7 percent). Those figures are based on an unusual 53-week sales […]