Recently Ecco announced its longtime author Anthony Bourdain would acquire and edit a handful of titles each year under his own eponymous imprint. Now William Morrow has followed suit in working with Dennis Lehane, whom they have published since 1994, on an imprint of his own. Dennis Lehane Books will “help identify and acquire literary fiction with a dark urban edge.” The announcement did not specify a launch title or a release date beyond saying Lehane would oversee publication of a “select number” of fiction titles annually and that he would work with his longtime editor Claire Wachtel. (Lehane’s agent […]
Archives for October 2011
Covering the Coverage of Publishers Launch Frankfurt
The Bookseller’s FutureBook has multiple reports from Monday’s day-long Publishers Launch Conference. This one is more of a summary while this piece focuses on the morning’s survey of ebook adoption in multiple markets globally, and the accompanying panel discussion including executives from Italy, Germany, Brazil and China. Their third focuses on the panel with agents David Miller at Rogers, Coleridge and White; Robert Gottlieb at Trident Media; Peter Fritz at Paul & Peter Fritz and Monica Martin at MB Agency. Miller reported seeing some “slippage” negotiating digital royalties above 25 percent (including escalators): “I’ve negotiated some better rates, and publishers are […]
eNews: Open Road Launches YA Original Title; Lerner Develops iPad App
Open Road is launching their first YA original for publication next February and it’s a work conceived and created especially for the digital medium, Andrea Buchanan’s paranormal ghost story GIFT. The full version–the full feature-set of which will work only on Apple’s platform, though more limited versions will work on other major platforms–includes such features as: audio tracks and music videos written and performed by one of the novel’s main characters (so the Booktrack-soundtrack idea, expanded); sound and visuals that “triggered” at key points in the story; a graphic novel created by one of the characters that is revealed throughout […]
Amazon Is Selling English Around the World, And Bringing the World to the US
While most countries around the world wait for substantial ebook markets to develop at home, the marketplaces developed by the big North American ebook players increasingly provide unexpectedly strong opportunities to sell ebooks in multiple languages. Amazon vp of Global Kindle Content Acquisition David Naggar addressed this opportunity with data at the Publishers Launch Conference on Monday. Addressing one of the issues raised in the morning panels, Naggar said they are indeed experiencing significant growth in selling English ebooks into translation territories as well. In countries where English is not the first language, Kindle’s year-to-date unit sales in 2011 have […]
PLC: Bowker to Add US eBook Sales Monitoring, and International Consumer Data
At this morning’s Publishers Launch Frankfurt conference, Bowker’s Kelly Gallagher announced two important data initiatives. In the US, Bowker is rolling out PubTrack Digital, a service to track actual ebook unit sales for (and from) participating publishers. Bowker’s way of getting around the unwillingness so far from retailers to share data in a common system is to work with publisher’ own invoices for their ebook sales. They take each publisher’s own data and integrate it into their aggregated data pool. Since they are working from publishers’ billing accounts, that means the data lags the marketplace by roughly five weeks–but it […]
At PLC Frankfurt, Mondadori to Launch Translated eBooks In US, and More World Views
Some information and highlights from this morning’s Publishers Launch Conference, eBooks Go Global, in Frankfurt. One of the premises of today’s conference was an expectation the ebooks will lead to new ways of publishing more fluidly around the world. Riccardo Cavallero confirmed this in the morning’s opening panel of international trade executives in two announcements. “We’re going to launch our authors in English directly into English-speaking markets” in ebook form. “We will keep paper rights free,” so if their translations find a market, “we will able to convince some reluctant North American publishers” to take over the English rights. Cavellero […]