Inside of some long and boosterish year-end blog posts, Smashwords made a couple of announcements. The privately-owned ebook distributor “will do around $15 million in ebook sales in 2012.” In June 2012, founder Mark Coker had told Forbes he expected to double his 2011 gross to $12 million for the year. Since romance and erotica comprised almost 40 percent of sales in June, we infer that growth in those categories helped lift overall results. It’s also increasingly clear that Smashwords’ growth is linked to the international expansion of the iBookstore. “For the month of November 2012, sales of Smashwords-distributed titles […]
Archives for January 2013
Bookselling: Prairie Lights’ New Publishing Venture: Robin’s Bookstore, Puddn’Head Books Close; And More
Prairie Lights Bookstore is teaming up with the University of Iowa Press to publish a handful of books annually, starting with Philip Levine’s poetry collection SWEET WILL. The Iowa Press-Citizen reports Prairie Lights will act as the publisher, while UI Press will produce, design and distribute the books. Store co-owner Jan Weissmiller told the paper there aren’t any strict guidelines on what will be published, but the work “will likely be fiction, poetry and literary non-fiction, rather than history or journalism.” The LA Times profiled recently-opened bookstore Bank of Books, Malibu, highlighting the “novel ways” the store attracts customers, including […]