It’s a big week for new releases, and we highlight 15 of them on the regularly-updated Just Published carousel at Bookateria. Featured home page books in the news include the memoir from Shirley MacLaine’s daughter Sachi Parker (LUCKY ME), which MacLaine has denounced; the WSJ questioning Truman Capote‘s “immaculately factual” account in the breakthrough IN COLD BLOOD; Nick Hornby‘s ABOUT A BOY may return to the screen as a television show; and fresh looks at Sylia Plath‘s poetry on the 50th anniversary of her death. For more great February picks, we show Amazon’s books of the month, BN’s February selections, […]
Archives for February 2013
Inkling Announces They Have An Announcement (The Tool They Announced A Year Ago)
You may be seeing a lot of stories on the interwebs about Inkling right now. Is it because they have announced something surprising and important, or is it because they engineered an embargoed release with ahead-of-time press interviews, fiery positioning (“Inkling Takes Dead Aim at Apple and Amazon”) and a “private event” at Jazz at Lincoln Center Monday night in advance of this week’s TOC conference? The announcement is the unveiling of their tool for building media rich ebooks on their platform. The tool is called Inkling Habitat; it works with the Inkling Content Discovery Platform. The tool already exists, […]
Hedge Fund Dimensional Added to Barnes & Noble Stake; Still Holds BAMM
In another of the annual filings for those owning more than 5 percent of public companies, Texas-based hedge fund Dimensional Fund Advisors (a huge quant fund that has over $260 billion in investments) disclosed that they increased their stake in Barnes & Noble during 2012. A year ago they reported having taken a 5.45 percent position of about 3.2 million shares by the end of 2011. The new filing indicates that their stake had grown to 7.28 percent of BN stock by the end of 2012, or roughly 4.3 million shares. Barnes & Noble’s stock has risen following the disclosure […]
People
Kobo executive Michael Tamblyn was promoted recently to the new position chief content officer for the ebookseller, and that move was officially announced today. He is responsible for Kobo’s content acquisition and sales, publisher and industry relations, and localized merchandising experiences across all of their services. CEO Michael Serbinis says in the announcement: “Michael Tamblyn’s leadership in the industry and his hands-on approach to working with publishers and authors has been instrumental to Kobo’s success. In his new role, he will continue to grow our existing catalogue and drive Kobo’s expansion into new content categories.” Rebecca Strauss will be moving […]
Macmillan Settles 3 Cases; Discounting Starts this Week, Stimulus Starts Soon, But Penguin Still Hasn’t Settled with States
On Friday Macmillan actually agreed to settle three lawsuits all at once–the ebook pricing case brought by the Department of Justice, but also the parallel case led by a consortium of attorneys general for the states and even the class-action case filed on behalf of consumers. Separately, also on Friday, the presiding judge over all of the cases Denise Cote gave final approval to the states’ settlement with Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster. As a result, the payout of restitution to qualifying consumers will begin “as soon as practicable.” (Earlier documents indicated payouts would begin 30 days […]
Bookselling: Longfellow Books Suffers Serious Water Damage; Books-A-Million to Close More Stores; and More
Longfellow Books in Portland, ME suffered extensive damage in the wake of the blizzard that hit much of the Northeastern US. “Apparently the wind blew in a window on the second floor, which caused pipes to freeze,” the store wrote on its Facebook page. The sprinkler system also turned on and “drenched the store’s books”, causing damage to nearly half of the store’s 30,000 titles. Co-owner Chris Bowe told the Portland Press-Herald he hopes Longfellow can re-open by Thursday night, in time for a Valentine’s Day benefit reading. In store closure news, Books-A-Million will close its Charlotte, NC location by […]