The 13-member board of the Association of Authors Representatives has sent a letter to the Department of Justice opposing the proposed agency ebook pricing settlement with Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster. In a separate email, the AAR called on members “to express their views on the settlement to the DOJ and we hope you will also urge your clients to do the same. Your note might address whether you feel the settlement will foster competition and well-being in the literary marketplace, or the opposite…. We believe it is tremendously important that we all be heard on this […]
Archives for May 2012
People, Etc.
Sara Nelson has been named editorial director, Amazon.com books, responsible for “leading our editorial vision for books in the print and Kindle bookstores” a company spokesperson told PW. She was most recently books editor at O Magazine, and prior to that was editor-in-chief of Publishers Weekly. Nelson, who will work out of New York starting next month, said in a statement: “I am thrilled to have the opportunity to expand the content on Amazon.com and to bring my voice to this Web site visited by millions of passionate readers.” (We’ve noticed many people in publishing mistakenly think she’s working for […]
The Quarter: Digital Rises at Harper and Hachette
News Corp. reported third quarter sales for the period ending March 31 after the close of the market Wednesday. In a departure from recent reports, the release actually mentions their book publishing unit by unit, once, in this morsel: Profits fell in their newspaper-dominated publishing business unit, but “the decline was partially offset by improved contributions from Dow Jones, HarperCollins and the integrated marketing services business.” In a brief statement of their own, Harper said they had “a terrific quarter across the board” thanks to “lower returns and higher ebook sales in most areas.” Worldwide digital sales for the quarter […]
Harlequin Q1 Sales and Profits Drop as Digital Accounts for 20.5 Percent of Sales; Bertelsmann Reports “Good Start”
Harlequin’s parent company Torstar reported first quarter results Wednesday. The book publishing unit had sales of $106.6 million (CA), down by $9.4 million, excluding the impact of foreign exchange (which added another $700,000 in earnings.) EBITDA was down $1.5 million in the quarter at $21.4 million, which Torstar attributed to “lower revenues as we continue to adjust in the print and digital book publishing markets to the shift to digital reading.” As in the past, the sales drop was attributed to “declines in print revenues [that] more than [offset] digital revenue growth.” Global digital revenues, up $2.9 million compared to […]
Google Launches eBooks In Italy, and More eNews
Google’s first ebookstore in a non-English-speaking country is a bit of a surprise, with the company launching Google Play with ebooks in Italy on Tuesday. The other global players are not particularly established in the Italian market already. The Kindle store launched there in December 2011, and the iBookstore opened in Italy (and much of Europe) in October 2011. Kobo named Italy as one of the markets they would launch in “shortly” back in April 2011, but have not gotten there yet. Bloomsbury Reader, created to reissue long out-of-print works as ebooks and POD paperbacks, is releasing an ebook original […]
People: Author Mitchard to Head New YA Imprint for F+W, and More
Author of 24 novels and books of non-fiction for adults, young adults, and children Jacquelyn Mitchard will run a new young adult imprint for F+W Media called Merit Press Books. They plan five titles for 2012 and 12 releases for 2013. Publisher Karen Cooper says: “The mission of the line is to provide an abundance of intensely readable, highly suspenseful and unforgettable fiction for readers aged thirteen and up, with a particular emphasis on strong, savvy, female heroes rising to conquer sometimes stunning challenges thrown at them by a very real contemporary world.” Best known for writing the inaugural Oprah’s […]