If you don’t have the Publishers Lunch Bookateria home page on regular browser rotation yet, we continue to feature an ever-changing set of “Books In the News,” aggregating stories and titles of interest with a different lens than the newsletter and our trade news feeds. If you don’t have the Publishers Lunch Bookateria home page on regular browser rotation yet, we continue to feature an ever-changing set of “Books In the News,” aggregating stories and titles of interest with a different lens than the newsletter and our trade news feeds. Playing now is Stephen King’s UNDER THE DOME, announced as […]
Archives for January 2013
Live Streams, One Sell-Out, and A Reading List
Digital Book World Week is here and while nothing takes the place of being there, the organizers have introduced a new paid livestream option for those who can’t make it to New York for the event on January 16 and 17. The livestream subscription includes the morning keynotes both days, as well as 3 afternoon breakout sessions each day. Details and registration for the livestream only are here. Regular DBW attendees will have full access to the streamed and recorded content through the end of the month, along with their choice of over 50 sessions across two days–show registration is […]
ABA Sales Softened In Second Half; UK eSales Still Lag US Considerably
As a group, ABA bookstores had a good year in 2012–but what’s implied in this BTW story is more significant than the stated statistics, ratifying our “story we can’t report” from yesterday. The ABA provides another indication that, despite happy anecdotal holiday sales reports,holiday book sales were soft, providing a soft ending to the year as early blockbusters (Hunger Games; Fifty Shades; etc.) gave way to a holiday season with few dominant, breakout books and a cooling off of the ebook market. (Barnes & Noble’s “core” non-Nook-related bookstores sales fell 3.1 percent during the holiday sales period.) What the ABA […]
People: RHPG Decentralizes Trade Paperback Publishing, von Mehren Exits
Random House Publishing Group announced Friday that it will “decentralize” trade paperback publishing. Going forward, individual publishers and imprints will manage their own trade paperbacks, “allowing each title’s original publication team to focus on and publish the book through its full life cycle: hardcover, eBook, and paperback.” As a result of the “decentralized” restructure, svp, publisher trade paperbacks Jane von Mehren is leaving the company after more than eight years. RHPG president and publisher Gina Centrello commended von Mehren for turning Random House trade paperbacks “into a driving force in the industry with an impressive track record in a broad […]
More On the Story We Can’t Report
Despite a peppy press release from Random House UK declaring “a digital Christmas for all the family” and a story echoing that theme in the Bookseller, we’re still struck by the holiday story that no one is reporting: The significant post-holiday ebook sales burst that has lifted the step-level of the market over the past few yearsappears to have been substantially smaller in both the US and now the UK. And no device maker has provided exuberant news about sales so far. By Random House UK’s own account, “sales of ebooks in the Christmas week” were up only 13 percent […]
It’s Team of Rivals Vs. Life of Pi In Top Oscar Nominations
The Academy Award candidates were announced Thursday morning, and LINCOLN (based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s TEAM OF RIVALS) topped the list with 12 nominations, followed by LIFE OF PI, based on Yann Martel’s novel, with 11. Both are Best Picture nominees, along with three other titles based on books: ARGO — based on Antonio Mendez’s book of the same name, published in September by Viking LES MISERABLES THE SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK — based on Matthew Quick’s novel