Little, Brown announced to booksellers Tuesday by e-mail that it was withdrawing from Q.R. Markham’s novel ASSASSIN OF SECRETS, and asking accounts to return the books for credit. The company says “it has come to our attention that many passages and lines have been taken from a variety of classic and contemporary spy novels. Upon investigation it was clear the passages in question were lifted and Little, Brown determined that the only course of action was to immediately recall books from retailers across the country.” The original trade paperback had a publication date of November 3. Markham’s plagiarism was originally […]
Archives for November 2011
Authors In the Kindle Lending Library: The Complete List
We’ve been finding that a lot of authors, agents and publishers often don’t know that they have books that Amazon has elected to include in the Kindle Lending Library “promotion”–where the etailer pays the full wholesale ebook price. So here is a linked list of all the authors Amazon says are represented in the collection, along with the number of titles matches. (Sometimes Amazon makes a match even if the “author” has contributed just a foreword.) We’ve also been working hard to learn more about the nature of the titles in the collection, through a variety of search routines (none […]
Paolini Claims His INHERITANCE
The fourth and final installment in Christopher Paolini’s bestselling fantasy series for children INHERITANCE releases today. Random House Children’s has announced a first printing of 2.5 million copies, a number you don’t hear very often any more for printed books. When BRISINGR was published in September 2008, the publisher reported opening day sales of 550,000 copies in the US, and 45,000 copies in the UK. Over the weekend, Waterstone’s told the Independent that the book recorded “the biggest pre-order of a children’s title since JK Rowling’s final Harry Potter book,” with “tens of thousands of copies” sold in advance.
Hachette Book Sales Fall 8 Percent In US; 10 Percent in UK
Lagardere reported third-quarter results, with revenues at their book publishing division falling 5.2 percent overall (and 2.5 percent on a like-for-like basis), down 33 million euros to 601 million euros for the period. Sales at Hachette Book Group in the US fell 8 percent and sales at Hachette UK declined 10 percent, “due mainly to the impact of e-books (which result in lower sales but higher margins), as well as the difficulties of certain retailers” liquidating. For the full nine months so far of the current fiscal year, ebooks comprised 21 percent of sales in the US and 9 percent […]
People, Etc.
At Random House, Jeff Weber has been promoted to vp, director, online and digital sales. Also at Random House Digital, Susan Livingston has been promoted to vp, strategic business planning and Randi Rosenkranz has been promoted to vp, digital development. Executive vp and managing director of Egmont USA Douglas Pocock is leaving the company to return to England for family reasons. Cally Poplak, managing director of Egmont Press, has taken over management of the U.S. business from London. Andrew Savikas has been named ceo of Safari Books online. He spent the past five years as program chair for O’Reilly’s Tools […]
Harbach Tops Amazon’s Best Books List of 2011
Amazon named their Top Ten Books of 2011, with Chad Harbach’s debut novel THE ART OF FIELDING as their No. 1 pick. The etailer’s ever-expanding “Best of” lists now include breakouts for over 20 different categories, from Art & Photography to Teens. In 15 of those categories they have separate Kindle and print-editions lists. Also new for this year is a list of Top 10 Kindle Singles. Interestingly, as best we can tell, nearly all of the various selections for the year’s best books were issued by “legacy publishers.” 1. The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach (Little, Brown) 2. […]