In a lively presentation at Publishers Launch BEA on Monday, Macmillan evp digital publishing Fritz Foy announced that Tor/Forge will launch a DRM-free ebookstore this July. It will sell all 2,000+ ebooks from which the company is lifting DRM, and “eventually, offerings from other publishers as well.” While the company announced the decision to remove DRM in late April, Foy said it was “a decision we had been grappling with for four years,” ever since they promoted the launch of Tor.com books by giving away books from 24 authors DRM-free. Foy noted that readers have wanted the company to start […]
Archives for June 2012
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Gretchen Young will join Grand Central Publishing on June 25 as vp, executive editor, reporting to Deb Futter. Young has spent the past fifteen years at Hyperion, most recently as vp, executive editor. “I am thrilled that Gretchen Young is joining our team,” Futter said in a statement. ” The range of books she has acquired is most impressive in both breadth and depth and I know her editorial instincts will be showcased at Grand Central.” New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman has won the Center for Fiction’s 2012 Maxwell E. Perkins Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Field of […]
Amazon Acquires Genre Publisher Avalon Publishing’s List
Amazon Publishing announced Monday that they have acquired publication rights to 0ver 3,000 backlist titles from Avalon Books, founded in 1950 and focused on publishing romance, mystery and Western novels to the library market. Bill Barry acted as exclusive broker on Avalon’s behalf. Publisher of Avalon Books Ellen Bouregy Mickelsen said in the announcement, “I’ve been running Avalon Books–which was founded by my father–since 1995, and it is time for me to explore the next chapter of my life. I chose Amazon Publishing because they care deeply about the writers, readers, and categories that have long mattered to our family business and they are […]
Oprah Revives Book Club “2.0” With Cheryl Strayed Memoir WILD
Late Friday afternoon Oprah announced via a video message obtained by the NYT that after a two-year hiatus — corresponding to when she left broadcast television and started her own network, OWN — she would bring back her book club, now called Oprah’s Book Club 2.0. The first selection in the revived club, which will feature “several selections” through the end of 2012, is Cheryl Strayed’s memoir WILD. “I love this book,” Winfrey wrote in the July issue of O, The Oprah Magazine. “I want to shout it from the mountaintop. I want to shout it from the Web. In […]
IDPF Executive Panel Focuses on “Serving The Author,” Not Necessarily Selling Direct
Once the inevitable if obligatory reminder from IDPF organizers Monday at their annual conference that there would be no talk of anything related to agency pricing or the Department of Justice investigation was dispensed with, Bloomsbury ceo Richard Charkin, Open Road ceo Jane Friedman, and Random House president of sales and digital operations Madeline McIntosh engaged in a spirited discussion of how a publisher sells direct, their attitudes on DRM, and other digital publishing matters. In terms of how important is it for publishers to nurture direct relationships with readers on a going-forward basis, McIntosh said that at Random House, […]
AerBook Launches Simple In-Browser Platform to Build eBooks and Apps with Visual Content, and Much More From Publishers Launch
At Monday’s Publishers Launch BEA Conference, in the Publishers Launchpad segment highlighting interesting start-ups, Ron Martinez debuted his company’s Aerbook Maker and Aerbook Cloud Publishing product. They promise to enable the creation and publishing of graphical ebooks and native apps, made right in the browser through drag-and-drop, without any code writing. Martinez said up until now “the cost and complexity has literally made whole categories have to sit out the party,” and Aerbook’s product is designed to make it affordable for publishers to adapt children’s, how-to, travel, educational, photography, or any other graphical content for ebooks and apps all at […]