At Little, Brown Children’s, Alvina Ling has been promoted to fiction editorial director, and Julie Scheina is moving up to editor. At Open Road, Lauren Naefe joins the company as senior digital marketing manager, focusing on publishing partnerships and author brand marketing, and reporting to chief marketing officer Rachel Chou. She was at Harper, Doubleday and most recently the National School Climate Council. Allison Myers Underwood will report to Naefe as marketing manager (she was at Knopf Doubleday); Laura De Silva has been promoted to associate digital marketing manager, reporting to Chou; and Justin Mitchell has been hired as assistant […]
Archives for June 2011
Aletheia Continues to Sell Barnes & Noble Stock; BN Files Pre-Emptive Suit Against Chipmaker
The mysterious masters (or mischievous monkeys?) who run the trading desk at Aletheia Research & Management continue their daily churn of Barnes & Noble stock, buying and selling strange blocks of shares day after day. But the trend of slimming their position continues; in the reported period since April 25, the firm reduced their holdings to 8.65 percent of all shares, down from about 10.4 percent. In other BN news, the company filed a pre-emptive suit in a San Francisco federal court recently against chipmaker LSI, seeking to protect itself from potential claims of patent infringement in their Nook devices. […]
eNews: Angry Birds Cookbook; Amazon Sales Guesses; and More
Speaking at the Open Mobile Summit in London, Rovio director of marketing and business development Peter Vesterbacka said the maker of the popular mobile game Angry Birds will self-publish its first book, a cookbook devoted to egg recipes, on various platforms. He told MocoNews that Rovio decided to self-publish after brief conversations with traditional publishers: “They offered to help us make the book, in exchange for 90 percent revenue share,” he said. “It was a short discussion.” Perhaps showing how much they know about the field they are about to enter, “Vesterbacka says Rovio will net 90 percent on sales […]
Najafi Said to Join Borders Hunt
The Wall Street Journal says that private-equity firm Najafi–the company willing to take Bookspan/Direct Brands off of Bertelsmann’s hands–has joined negotiations as a potential acquirer of some significant portion of Borders 265 superstores. A prospective buyer would acquire Borders’ web site and customer lists, reaffirming our initial inference that a buyer for the superstores would take all of the significant operations, leaving the remaining superstores and Waldenbooks outlets unable to function. The Journal’s source adds that “Borders hopes to soon select one of the suitors as a so-called stalking-horse bidder that would make an offer others must top in the […]
Spain Gets a Big New eBook Player
Spanish telecom giant Telefónica announced on Tuesday that it is launching a new ebookstore and ereader in Spain beginning next week. The reader, called the Movistar BQ, a 169 euro model with the now standard 6-inch touchscreen and wifi, will go on sale in the company’s Movistar cell phone stores and in big box retailers across Spain on June 14, in hopes of catching on with readers this summer. Initially, the ereaders will provide access to about one thousand public domain titles stored in the Movistar eBook cloud store, with paid content to be added in the fall. El País reports the […]
Where Would Borders Shoppers Take Their Book Dollars?
We’re excited to launch a new, regular feature today in conjunction with Bowker PubTrack Consumer. They will be including questions posed by Publishers Lunch as part of their regular monthly online surveys of over 6,000 book buyers across the country. The result and analysis of that information will run exclusively here in Publishers Lunch and at PublishersMarketplace.com. We’ll be looking to survey consumers on hot button issues for the trade that don’t usually receive this kind of focused treatment. Feel free to share your thoughts with us on potential future lines of questioning. And of course the folks at Bowker […]