People In the UK, publishing director of Transworld’s crime and thriller books Selina Walker will move over to become publisher for Century and Arrow, starting in mid-July. At Transworld, editorial director Sarah Adams will take over Walker’s role; Cat Cobain is being promoted to publishing director of the women’s fiction list; and nonfiction editor Sarah Emsley is moving up to senior editorial director. At HarperCollins, Leah Wasielewski has been promoted to senior director of marketing for Harper, Harper Business and Broadside Books. Bloomsbury sub-rights manager since 2006 Lauren Shekari has left the company. In disclosure forms, Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown […]
Archives for June 2011
Harry Potter Portal “Pottermore” Gears Up for Launch
With the final Harry Potter movie releasing in exactly a month, an online promotion challenged Harry Potter fans to decode the name of a new Potter-related website: Pottermore.com. The tease has led to all kinds of unbridled speculation. The folks at fan site The Leaky Cauldron have seen the site and say “it is, in a word, breathtaking. That is all we are permitted to say at the moment.” (And they understood it’s not a new book, even though a lot of fans are not listening.) Take note that the Pottermore name was trademarked by Warner Bros. in mid-2009. The […]
Bookselling: 42 More Angus & Robertson Stores Close; “Last Bookstore” Expands
In other bookselling news, 42 more Angus & Robertson stores in Australia are being shut and 19 A&R stores are being sold “within a fortnight”, resulting in the loss of 519 jobs: 116 full-time, 47 part-time and 266 casual book shop staff, with the remaining 90 jobs cut from A&R’s and warehouse staff. Sydney Morning Herald The LAT profiles Josh Spencer, owner of downtown LA used bookstore The Last Bookstore, which opened in December 2009 and recently moved to a 10,000 square foot location in the city’s downtown area. The upgrade seems to be working: “We sold more books here […]
Borders Cancels Store Liquidation Auction; Says New Financing Amendment is Pending
Borders’ warning that it might have to close dozens of some of its best store locations seems to have worked. On top of the 11 announced extensions of the deadline to accept or reject leases, the company filed a new motion late Wednesday with the court canceling the intended auction among liquidators that had been scheduled for June 16. After “extensive negotiations,” the filing says they “believe [they] have reached an agreement in principle” with both their lenders and the unsecured creditors committee “regarding an amendment to the DIP facility which would alleviate the need to conduct” the store closing […]
Taschen Opens Store in Chicago’s Art Institute; More Borders Stores Get Deadline Extensions
Taschen will open a new store in Chicago’s Art Institute, which has set aside about 30 percent of the museum stores reconfigured book section for the specialty publisher. It’s the first time Taschen will operate a store as part of a museum and a way for the company to test the Chicago market. “The million-dollar question is would we do this in other museums,” Creed Poulson, spokesman for Los Angeles-based Taschen America, told the Chicago Tribune. “We would certainly be open to that. We’re very eager to see how this plays out.” Tribune Borders has been granted more time on […]
eNews: Raccah on What Sells Digitally and Physically; OverDrive Announcements; and More
In a data-drive blog post Sourcebooks ceo Dominique Raccah underscores that fiction is disproportionately dominating ebook bestseller charts as well as her company’s digital sales. While well over half of Sourcebooks’ print sales come from adult nonfiction, over 80 percent of their ebook sales are from fiction. “Right now we’re seeing relatively weak conversion of adult non-fiction to ebooks,” Raccah writes. While reference is the single largest category within nonfiction, she says “our experience at Sourcebooks is that it’s the hardest category to get right in ebooks.” Which is ironic, since epublishing and the internet were widely expected to eliminate many […]