After a flatter overall trade market in March, the AAP numbers for April are the first to reap the benefits of big sales from EL James’ FIFTY SHADES OF GREY TRILOGY, though the numbers have much more to do with cleaner returns (and getting past the Borders bankruptcy) rather than an outright improvement in sales. Net trade sales from reporting publishers totaled $386.4 million for the month, a big $33.8 million ahead of the revised total for April 2011. Net children’s and young adult sales jumped from $97.2 million a year ago to $120.9 million this year. Adult ebook sales […]
Archives for August 2012
Judge Cote Limits Apple’s Settlement Comment to Five Pages, Will Rule On Settlement After Motions Are “Fully Submitted”
The trickle of insights into Judge Denise Cote’s impatience with all parties in the ebook pricing settlement continues, with a brief order from Tuesday. She was answering Apple’s request to file 10 pages of additional “views” by August 15 instead of staying within the clear 5-page limit Judge Cote already specified (denied), as well as their request for a hearing on the settlement. As we suggested yesterday, anyone aspiring to file additional remarks should take the seriousness of the Judge’s 5-page limit to heart. As also noted previously, it is at the Judge’s discretion whether or not to hold a […]
People
Ryan Doherty will move over to Spiegel & Grau as senior editor. He is currently an editor for Ballantine and Random House Trade Paperbacks, and will continue to oversee film tie-in projects for all of Random House Publishing Group. At Berkley, Leis Pederson has been promoted to editor. Lisa Grubka will join Fletcher & Company as an agent on August 19. She has been an agent at Foundry Literary + Media for the past four years. At becker&mayer!, Michael del Rosario has been promoted to managing editor, for the book division. In another for the annals of outrageous self-promotion (a […]
Corporate: Teachers Awards from Random House; Paperless Reporting from S&S
The Random House Foundation, Inc. is creating the Random House Teacher Awards, to “recognize the nation’s most dynamic and resourceful teachers who use their creativity to inspire and successfully instill a love of reading in students,” providing “grants to help make their innovative reading programs possible.” Crown author Jonathan Kozol will present the first awards at the National Council of Teachers of English Annual Convention in November. After posting PDF files of client royalty statements to their Agent Portal back in February of this year, Simon & Schuster is now inviting agents to opt out of receiving paper royalty statements. […]
Judge Cote Approves Booksellers’ Request–But Won’t Let Them Say Anything Else
On Monday, Judge Denise Cote agreed to the joint request by the ABA and Barnes & Noble to file a friend of the court brief regarding the ebook pricing settlement. But, since the motion from the booksellers itself already “contains five pages of substantive arguments,” and Judge Cote has already set a strict five-page limit on the parties to the ligitation for any responses to the government’s filings, she will not accept any additional material from the ABA and BN. In other words, the arguments they made in asking to file a new brief have been accepted–as the brief itself. […]
Textbook Time: Kno Adds K-12 eTexts and Amazon Joins Book Rental Market
Back to school time looms, which means more textbook announcements. Start-up Kno is expanding from their base in college textbooks to the K-12 textbook market. They offer one-year rentals for $9.99 or less (though any parent knows that trying to “finally stop their kids from carrying their heavy backpacks to and from school” is a pipe dream). Their first K-12 digital textbooks come from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. In a separate press release, Amazon announced that they are finally renting physical textbooks to college students, just like most of the major competitors in the market (from Barnes & Noble College, Nebraska […]