Heather Lazare will join Touchstone as a senior editor on August 1, reporting to editorial director Sally Kim. Lazare is currently editor and publishing manager of Crown Trade Paperbacks. Prior to Crown, she worked at the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency. Brien McDonald has been promoted to BEA’s director of strategic accounts for Book Expo America (BEA). He will be responsible for special projects for business development as well as overseeing all of BEA’s digital initiatives. At Candlewick Press, Sarah Ketchersid has been promoted to executive editor.
Archives for July 2011
Kobo Launches In Germany
After a planned debut in May (announced at the London Book Fair), Kobo has now gone live with their German ebookstore. The company says their collection features 80,000 German-language titles, which is more than Germany’s own collective effort Libreka (which lists about 73,000 titles), as well as Amazon’s recently-launched store, which announced 25,000 German titles at launch but seems to have grown to about 48,000 German books according to sub-category counts listed on the site. German-language apps are available for iOS, Android and BlackBerry, and German edition of the newest version of Kobo’s own ereader will follow in August, priced […]
eNews: Android Market Update Features eBooks; AT&T Sponsors Kindle 3G With Special Offers; And More
Google continues to assemble more of an end-to-end ebook strategy. Earlier this week they announced the first ereader integrated with Google eBooks, the iriver Story HD. Not indicated in Google’s own release on Monday, Target has a six-month exclusive on selling the $139.95 device–meaning independent bookstores carrying Google eBooks won’t be able to sell this companion device until after Christmas. It’s led to speculation that Target may carry Google eBooks as well. In the meantime, Google has announced separately an update to its Android Market “over the coming weeks” for mobile devices that provides more an iTunes store experience. Customers […]
Briefs: BBC Takes Big Writedown on Lonely Planet; Collins Buys A&R Franchise Stores
BBC Worldwide write down nearly £34 million (or $54 million) on the value of Lonely Planet, after paying £42 million earlier this year for the remaining 25 percent of the company outside of its control. (The BBC bought a 75 percent stake in 2007 for £89 million.) “The strength of the Australian dollar in recent years has led to challenging sales conditions for the Lonely Planet business,” said the company in a statement. “This has been compounded by declines since 2008 in key travel guide markets suffering from the impact of the global financial crisis.” The rise in the Australian […]
People: Rowling on New Projects; Harris Closing Book on Sookie Stackhouse; and More
JK Rowling said in several interviews to coincide with Friday’s opening of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II film that she has written “quite a lot” of new material and has plans to publish it. (Previously she said she was working simultaneously on a political fairytale for children and a novel for adults.) “I think I always felt I didn’t want to publish again until the last film was out because Potter has been such a huge thing in my life. I’ve been writing hard ever since I finished writing Hallows, so I’ve got a lot of stuff […]
Amazon Agitates for Voter Referendum to Overturn California Tax Law
Amazon’s next move in the California sales tax battle is to support an effort to revoke the new law that makes online retailers with affiliates or subsidiaries subject to sales tax through a voter referendum. In the first phase, they will need over half a million signatures from voters by the end of September to get on the ballot. But it’s not clear that overturning the new requirements would hold much appeal for individual voters beyond the 25,000 or so revoked affiliates in the state, since earlier California law requires individuals to pay sales for their online purchases, whether or […]