Amazon has officially created an “eBooks Kindle en Español” store for Spanish-language ebooks for US customers at www.amazon.com/tiendakindle. Barnes & Noble has made this category a priority for the past couple of years and is thought to have over 50,000 Spanish-language ebooks available–but Kindle says it has “the most Spanish-language bestsellers, as measured by Nielsen.” They say they offer “over 30,000 titles,” and are offering an exclusive work of nonfiction by Paulo Coelho, “El Libro de los Manuales.” They have translated some Kindle Single into Spanish, and Spanish-language titles are welcome through the KDP publishing platform (just as Nook’s PubIt does). In the release, […]
Archives for April 2012
Settlement With Justice By Some Publishers Looms…Or Not
Since last week, people with knowledge of settlement discussions between book publishers using the agency model for ebooks and the Justice Department have said with authority that some kind of agreement might be imminent. Absent an actual settlement and final details of how it would work, we didn’t think there was a story there–given the weeks of stories elsewhere saying there might be a settlement soon. But the Justice Department apparently continues to keep the WSJ informed, fueling the presumption within publishing that they are trying to press in public a case that they have yet to close in private […]
David Frum to Release A Novel, with Agency WME As His Publisher
The end of this month will see the release of political commentator (and contributor to Newsweek/Daily Beast and CNN) David Frum’s first novel, a timely political satire called PATRIOTS (which opens as America’s first black president has just lost re-election). It’s arguably the first original publication from literary agency William Morris Endeavor’s epublishing brand 212 Books. (The agency also helped facilitate client James Frey’s direct ebook release of James Frey’s The Final Testament of the Holy Bible.) The Huffington Post has serialization rights and will start posting chapters of the book beginning the week of April 23 (prior to the […]
Amazon Asserts The Power of Exclusives
Amazon issued another of their periodic press releases underscoring how the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library “not only generates additional revenue from loans for authors, but actually increases customer purchases of authors’ work as well (even those authors, say, of high-profile YA movie tie-ins who are not there by choice) and detailing the money made by self-published authors who elect to epublish exclusively with the company. The new statistic is that “16 of the top 100 best-selling paid Kindle books in March are exclusive to the Kindle Store.” (For people paying attention, they announced that KOLL comprises over 100,000 titles more […]
People, Etc.
Timothy Travaglini has joined Open Road Integrated Media as director of children’s acquisitions, reporting to advisor Barbara Marcus. Travaglini will help expand Open Road’s ebook acquisition of backlist children’s titles spanning young adult, middle grade, and picture books, as well as acquiring frontlist titles. He was formerly senior editor at Putnam Children’s. At Thomas Nelson, Russ Schwartz has been promoted to vp of independent Christian retail sales. Former deputy director of publicity at Holt Maggie Sivon has joined Amazon Publishing in New York as a publicist. Christine Manfield‘s TASTING INDIA was named the IACP’s cookbook of the year on Tuesday. Among […]
People: Morrison to Lead Picador
Setting aside any doubts about Macmillan’s committment to Picador, the company has hired Stephen Morrison as vp, publisher for Picador Books starting April 30. He will report to both Jonathan Galassi and Stephen Rubin. Morrison is currently associate publisher and editor-in-chief at Penguin. His “mandate is to make Picador one of the industry’s most undaunted, aggressive marketing machines, culling books from all of Macmillan’s divisions, including St. Martins, FSG and Holt.” Reporting to Morrison will be vp, sales and marketing Darin Keesler; executive director of publicity James Meader; senior editor David Rogers; creative director Henry Yee; and managing editor Kolt […]