HarperCollins announced Monday afternoon it “has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Thomas Nelson for an undisclosed sum.” (The deal is of sufficient scale that the purchase amount will be disclosed in a quarterly report from Harper parent News Corp. after it is finalized.) The acquisition is expected to close by the end of the calendar year, and combining Nelson with Harper’s Zondervan unit would create a sizeable Christian publishing division. Harper ceo Brian Murray says in the release, “HarperCollins’ global print and digital publishing platform, which includes e-book distribution into more than 175 markets, print-on-demand, digital-to-print at retail, […]
Archives for October 2011
People, Etc.
Kristin Ellison is joining INScribe Digital as director of business development reporting to Larry Norton. She was editorial director of WOWIO. Nadine Vassallo has joined the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) as project coordinator, working in support of BISG’s research, event and standards development portfolios. She has worked at the Penguin Speakers Bureau, Phaidon Press, and Borders. At Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Josh Dykstra has been promoted to inside sales representative, responsible for managing independent trade bookstore, art gallery and museum, and special market accounts. Edmison/Harper has been appointed the North American literary scout for Editora Planeta Brasil. Politics […]
Dzanc Aims to rEprint Over 500 Literary Titles Over the Next Year
Independent non-profit publisher Dzanc Books is another player gearing up to publish a significant line of classic and backlist works in ebook form. Deal-watchers will have noticed that the publisher has been listing some of those acquisition recently in our deal reports, but publisher Dan Wickett says the scope of the project is far larger than the reports would indicate. Dzanc’s rEprint series has “well over a hundred titles contracted for and in-process” with deals in process for a hundred more, and a goal of reissuing more than 500 literary titles “over the course of the next year.” Originated by […]
Bookselling: BN Boutiques and November 7 Announcement; Riverrun Bookstore Looks for New Location, Additional Backers
Building on our report from Friday, Barnes & Noble has indeed announced a press event on the morning of November 7 featuring “a very special announcement,” widely expected to unveil their latest ereading tablet. Separately, at the company’s annual meeting last week, the company confirmed the other piece of information cited from the Digital Reader: the company is doubling the size of the Nook boutiques in 40 of their “most productive stores” to 2,000 square feet of space, presumably to feature those new devices. Riverrun Bookstore will not renew the lease at its current location in Portsmouth, NH, set to […]
The WSJ’s New Bestseller Lists
As reported Friday, this weekend the WSJ launched their own ebook bestseller lists, managed by Nielsen BookScan. The inaugural groups–featuring lists of 10 slots each for fiction and nonfiction ebooks, and two combined any-format print and ebook lists–look pretty much like the same data pool already reflected in bestseller tabulations from USA Today and the New York Times. The one notable variant so far is Tom Standage’s A HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN 6 GLASSES, on the list thanks to being featured as the $1.99 Kindle Daily Deal on October 21. That boost was good enough to make it No. […]
eNews: WSJ Adds eBook Bestseller List, Compiled By Nielsen; Amazon in Talks for Kindle in China; and More
Starting tomorrow, the WSJ’s Weekend edition will feature their own ebook bestseller lists. Like the NYT lists, the Journal will present both ebook-only lists for fiction and nonfiction, as well as combined print and ebook lists in both categories. All titles are eligible–self-published, children’s, backlist, etc.–as long as they have a minimum price of 99 cents or higher. Nielsen BookScan is aggregating the data for the WSJ, drawing on what the release calls “all major retailers,” said to include Amazon, Nook, iBookstore, Sony and Google eBooks among others. Like the other WSJ charts, the new lists will be positional only, […]