Book packager and publisher Round Table Companies is licensing Hachette’s digital content management system to create an app storefront that allows Round Table to sell their titles on the iPad. Hachette’s system provides app publishers features for direct consumer relationships that include push notifications, feedback generation, analytics tracking, and direct sales. HBG is hosting the content on their servers and licensing access to their digital platform, but spokesperson Sophie Cottrell says that “going forward, HBG will consider licensing the software” for installation on third-party servers. This is their first software-as-a-service agreement, and they are interested in licensing additional clients. The service […]
Archives for October 2011
Books In the Making: NYT Reads Condoleeza Rice Memoir Early; SEAL Book Presents Alternate Account of Bin Laden Death; and More
The NYT got a copy of Condoleeza Rice‘s memoir NO HIGHER HONOR a week before its November 1 publication by Crown, revealing that she clashed “repeatedly” with vice president Dick Cheney and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and “at one point even threatened to resign when she felt circumvented.” That confrontation occurred in November 2001 when she learned President George W. Bush had issued an order prepared by the White House counsel Alberto Gonzales authorizing military commissions without telling her: “If this happens again,” she told the president, “either Al Gonzales or I will have to resign.” NYT Former Seal Team […]
Harper Acquires Newmarket Press List
HarperCollins has acquired “the majority of titles” published by Esther Margolis’s Newmarket Press. The publisher’s list comprises over 200 books on film (particularly screenplays and “making of” books that tie in to award-winning movies), theater, and performing arts, as well as over 100 titles on parenting, psychology, health, biography, history, and business as well as some fiction. The only titles not included in the agreement are inactive ones that will revert back to the rightsholders. At one point, HarperCollins had served as Newmarket’s distributor. Margolis, who started Newmarket in 1981, will join Harper’s It Books as an executive editor. She […]
Reading Steve Jobs
A rash of copies of the embargoed Steve Jobs biography were purchased by news organizations yesterday, which may dampen the appeal of Fortune’s “exclusive” excerpt which is still being held for Monday. The AP recounts that he raged at one-time Apple board member Eric Schmidt in 2010 when a Google Android phone appeared with iPhone-like features. “I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” Jobs said. “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go […]
People: B&N CFO Lombardi Steps Down
Barnes & Noble’s chief financial officer Joseph Lombardi has resigned his position, and corporate controller Allen Lindstrom will act as interim CFO while the company conducts an executive search. Lombardi will stay on as a non-officer employee until the middle of next year “to assist in the transition.” CEO William Lynch says in the announcement, “We’ve built great bench strength and continuity in our finance department over the years, and everyone from the management team to the board of directors has the utmost confidence in Allen as he assumes the interim CFO position. We thank Joe for his service to […]
People: Algonquin Moves Into YA/Middle Grade Book Publishing
Algonquin Books will start publishing young adult and middle grade books by the end of 2012 and has hired Elise Howard, formerly svp and associate publisher of HarperCollins Children’s Books, to oversee the program. Howard plans to start the new list with up to a half dozen titles next year and build “gradually” from there. She will work out of Algonquin’s New York office, starting in mid-November. “Developing a brand-new young adult and middle-grade readers’ list is a rare opportunity,” Howard said in the announcement. “The really thrilling challenge is to do it within a program as esteemed as Algonquin’s, […]