This week Random House’s language learning program, Living Language, will launch its new Platinum Edition, a multi-platform solution that will allow users to engage with a variety of languages through course books and CDs, mobile apps, an online course, an online community, and individualized instruction from a native speaker e-tutor. The course will initially be offered for $179 in French, Spanish, Italian and German, with Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic editions to come. (The Platinum app is also available for separate purchase.) As part of the launch, coordinated by the ad agency Mullen (most recently responsible for a multi-million dollar campaign […]
Archives for August 2011
People
Simon & Schuster vp, director of subsidiary rights Marcella Berger will retire at the end of this year after more than 35 years with the company. In a statement jointly sent out by S&S publisher Jonathan Karp, Touchstone publisher Stacy Creamer and Threshold publisher Louise Burke, they commend Berger for her “stalwart presence” and for being “known and respected throughout the international publishing community for her knowledge, amiable calm, and depth of experience.” Among the books Berger worked on included every title by Bob Woodward, LIVING HISTORY by Hilary Clinton, THE DYLAN CHRONICLES by Bob Dylan, 35 suspense novels by […]
New Book Stats Describe the Flat Trade In New Ways–Including $838 Million in 2010 eBooks
After a couple years of no industry-wide statistics and many years before that of poor, illusory numbers, the publishing industry is back on the road to measuring itself with the new BookStats, prepared jointly by the AAP and BISG, released in highlight form to trade media on Tuesday. All of the new numbers as you will read about them are modeled estimates rather than actual data–but they draw on data supplied by just under 2,000 publishers, and the methodology for extrapolating the estimates was far more careful and rational than the process used by the BISG alone for its annual […]
An Unblurred Photo Pits Random House Against the CIA
In 2005, Random House Inc. imprint Presidio Press published onetime CIA agent Gary Schroen’s First In: An Insider’s Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan to some fanfare and minimal controversy. For four years, and for three different editions, that’s how things remained. Then the mass market edition unblurred a photo of covert CIA agent John Peppe, who was involved in one of the agency’s Afghanistan missions, that was originally blurred in the hardcover, ebook and trade paper editions. That one change by the publisher set off an odyssey of lawsuits, accusations of invasion of […]
People, Etc.
Carol Nygren has joined Thomas Nelson as evp and managing director of the company’s Live Events business in Plano, TX. Previously she was svp of Licensed Live Family Entertainment, part of the Disney Theatrical Group. In an interview on Waterstone’s intranet obtained by the Bookseller, new owner Alexander Mamut claimed the company’s existence was “important for UK society” though was vague on the specifics of ensuring the chain’s survival beyond saying that “massive work” was necessary: “If we can make a turnaround, improve everything, have good books properly displayed, a good atmosphere, good recommendations [with] marketing and investment of course, […]
Amazon Fall Books Preview
It’s August, and that means it’s time for the avalanche of previews for fall books. Amazon kicks things off with a slew of choices in fiction, mystery/thriller, science fiction & fantasy, and non-fiction, as well as their Top 10 Editors’ Picks: INHERITANCE, by Christopher Paolini THE MAGICIAN KING, by Lev Grossman REAMDE, by Neal Stephenson 11/22/63, by Stephen King 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami THE NIGHT CIRCUS, by Erin Morgenstern THE MARRIAGE PLOT, by Jeffrey Eugenides THE SUBMISSION, by Amy Waldman THE ART OF FIELDING, by Chad Harbach BOOMERANG, by Michael Lewis Amazon Fall Books Preview page In other Amazon news, […]