Random House’s legal department has promoted Kathy Trager to evp, general counsel, while Matthew Martin and Anke Steinecke have been named svp, associate general counsel, respectively. Former London Book Fair Director Alistair Burtenshaw has launched his own publishing industry consultancy and project management business, Publishing Connections Ltd. Melissa Sarver has joined Folio Literary Management as the co-director of international rights and will continue to represent authors in the areas of Young Adult, select literary and upmarket adult fiction, narrative non-fiction, business books and cookbooks. She was previously at The Elizabeth Kaplan Literary Agency. At Little, Brown, Heather Fain has been promoted to […]
Archives for December 2012
Amazon’s Many 2012 Bestseller Lists
Amazon announced their bestselling books of the year, which always makes for some interesting analysis. The top-selling non-Fifty Shades books were Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl (the No. 2 adult print seller–and the No. 4 ebook) and Mark Owen’s No Easy Day (the No. 3 adult ebook). But those “announced” lists comprise “only first editions published in 2012.) Separate, less-publicized lists displayed on the site also show you their actual bestsellers for the year, regardless of the year in which those books were first published (e.g. the way conventional bestseller lists track books). On those lists, Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games books […]
iBookstore Likes Heller and Boo
Apple’s iTunes named their top 10 lists for the year across all product categories, including their favorite books–with Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars their top novel, John Green’s The Fault In Our Stars their favorite YA book, and Katherine Boo’s much-heralded Behind the Beautiful Forevers their top nonfiction title. Fiction The Dog Stars, Peter Heller The Yellow Birds, Kevin Power The Round House, Louise Erdrich Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Ben Fountain How Should a Person Be, Sheila Heti Shine Shine Shine, Lydia Netzer This Is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz The Light Between Oceans, ML Stedman Heft, Liz […]
Nielsen BookScan Expands to Include Walmart Data
Nielsen BookScan US announced that they are incorporating sales data from what has been the largest elusive seller of physical books in the US. Beginning with the first week of January 2013, point-of-sale data for printed books sold at over 4,000 Walmart locations across the U.S. and Puerto Rico will be included in the service’s sales database. BookScan estimates that with the new data, they will account for over 80 percent of the US retail print book market. “Greater accuracy of information and insight into book consumers is what all BookScan clients want, and adding Walmart data provides a big […]
New eBookstores for Germany and China
In the latest international ebookstore expansions, slow-moving Sony has finally launched their long-promised German Reader Store. They say it includes “thousands” of DRM-free books and at least one or two come from Luebbe, but there are no specific details provided beyond that. Fast-moving Amazon has launched a Kindle store and reading apps in China. A launch of Kindle reading devices there has long been expected, but still not announced. It has been a busy month for store openings. Kindle launched a proper Canadian store and went live in Brazil in December as well–at the same time as Kobo and Google […]
European Authorities Accept eBook Pricing Settlement; Penguin Now In Talks
As expected, the three US Settlers (Harper, Hachette and Simon & Schuster), along with Macmillan and Apple, have settled the EU investigation into ebook pricing as previously negotiated. The European Commission has formally “accepted the legally binding commitments” from the settling parties. Their announcement provides a lengthy way of saying that the EC has accepted the same basic settlement that was laboriously negotiated with the US Department of Justice (without ever actually mentioning the US case). Though Penguin has not settled with the EC, the new announcement says that position may change–not a big surprise, since settlements in both Europe […]