Sara O’Keeffe has joined Atlantic Books’ Corvus division as editorial director, replacing Nicolas Cheetham, who left to join his father Anthony at his new venture Head of Zeus. O’Keeffe was most recently a senior editor at Orion. Brigid Nelson has joined HarperCollins Children’s Books UK as divisional sales manager. She was most recently children’s product director at Penguin Children’s UK. Author and NYT political columnist Tom Wicker, 85, died on Friday, and poet Ruth Stone, 96, died earlier this month. Among her many accolades, Stone won the National Book Award, the NBCC award, two Guggenheims and a Whiting Award. Evolutionary […]
Archives for November 2011
Retail News
Initial accounts of overall retail sales on Black Friday were positive, with ShopperTrak estimating that sales were up 6.6 percent, setting a new record total and recording the strongest year-over-year gain since 2007. On Small Business Saturday, the Obama family went shopping at Kramerbooks on Dupont Circle, reportedly buying The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever, Tails, The Tiger’s Wife, The Phantom Tollbooth, Zen Shorts, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and Descent into Chaos: the United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia. For Cyber Monday, Open […]
Penguin Adds Opaque Statement Indicating Kindle Lending Restoration May Be Temporary
On Wednesday afternoon Penguin issued another statement on the Kindle library lending issue that showed further disagreement with OverDrive. The supplier had said earlier in the day (reported in Lunch) that Kindle lending for Penguin books had been restored–without noting that this was a temporary restoration “until the end of the year.” The two companies also disagree on exactly how the Kindle lending was suspended in the first place. OverDrive had said Monday they were “instructed to suspend availability of new Penguin eBook titles from our library catalog and disable ‘Get for Kindle’ functionality for all Penguin eBooks.” But Penguin’s […]
Kindle Lending Library Reaches Out to KDP Authors–With Cash
When Kindle launched their free ebook library for their prime customers–now called Kindle Owner’s Lending Library to clearly communicate it is for device owners only–it included titles from Amazon Publishing (138 by our exclusive count) but no self-published ebooks from the KDP program. As of December 1, Amazon intends to add KDP titles to the lending library. Authors approached by Amazon to participate say the company is offering a chance to share in a large pool of licensing cash–but requiring complete exclusivity in exchange. The money pool, according to those familiar with the offer, is $500,000 a month over the […]
Penguin Returns to Kindle Lending
OverDrive announced on its blog Wednesday that Kindle availability for Penguin eBooks already in library catalogs “has been restored as of this morning. Penguin titles are available for check out by Kindle users and the Kindle format will be available for patrons who are currently on a waiting list for a Penguin title. This does not affect new releases, which remain unavailable.” They added, “At this time, no further information is available. We hope to share more details in the near future.” Separately, Early Word asked Random House about their current view on library ebook lending, and received this tepid […]
Bookselling: New Location for RiverRun; New Owner for New England Mobile Book Fair; and More
In an email to customers, RiverRun Bookstore owner Tom Holbrook said the store has signed a letter of intent, and will soon sign a lease, for a new retail space downtown, just two blocks away from its current location. The move, which Holbrook expects to be finalized by December, will save RiverRun $50,000 a year in costs, while on the financial side, “more than a dozen people have come forward and offered to become part-owners of RiverRun, and dozens more have donated books and money to the cause.” The New England Mobile Book Fair in Needham, MA, which has operated […]