The last of the big six trade publishers to at least try lending ebooks to libraries, Simon & Schuster announced on Monday their first experiment: A one-year pilot program with the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Public Library, and the Queens Public Library that will make available S&S’s complete catalog of ebooks, with new titles available immediately upon publication. Manhattan and Brooklyn’s program will start lending April 30, with Queens to follow suit in mid-May. Under the pilot program, the three library systems can acquire any S&S ebook title at any time, with each title available for use for […]
Archives for April 2013
Perseus and WME Sponsor Book Discovery App “Hackathon”
Perseus and William Morris Endeavor are organizing a content to help motivate programmers to develop some kind of digital innovation–a web site, app or widget–to help expose booklovers to new book titles online. A 36-hour Publishing Hacka-thon will begin May 18 at co-working space The Alley NYC. The finalists will move on to a presentation at BEA, judgd by Perseus ceo David Steinberger, William Morris Endeavor’s Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, and Stephen Evans at private equity firm Silver Lake (which owns a stake in WME). The prize is $10,000, and a pitch meeting with WME’s ceo Ari Emanuel. Crains
Former Rodale Star Zinczenko Pairs with Random House On Imprint, Book Deal, and Distribution
Random House Publishing Group will partner with former Rodale executive David Zinczenko for an imprint, a multi-book contract, and a distribution deal. The imprint, Zinc Ink, will issue 6 to 12 lifestyle and nonfiction titles a year starting in 2014 in a profit-sharing arrangement. Titles signed include Maria Menounos’s The EveryGirl’s Diet and boxer and trainer Michael Olajide Jr.’s Sleekify. Zinczenko’s colleague at Galvanized Brands, chief operating officer Stephen Perrine, will be co-publisher alongside BBD publisher Libby McGuire. They will acquire along with BBD nonfiction editorial director, Jennifer Tung. Zinczenko will write three books to be determined on exercise, diet and […]
Booksellers Plead with Court Not to Dismiss DRM Case
The three booksellers who sued Amazon and the six largest publishing houses for what they characterized as restrictive DRM practices filed a response to those parties’ motions to dismiss the case. In the memo, filed yesterday, Posman Books, Fiction Addiction, and Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza say Amazon are “misreading” the complaint and relying on an “unsupported assertion of what they claim is contained in non-public contracts that they have purposefully decided not to produce to the court.” The original suit–already revised and amended once–“more than adequately alleged harm to competition in the market for ebooks” in the booksellers’ view. […]
Pre-London Dealmaking Is Moderate As the Money Goes to Fiction
It’s time for our annual look at dealmaking activity in advance of the London Book Fair and as usual, we keep trying to find ways of looking at our deal report data that can reveal meaningful patterns rather than slight statistical oddities. It’s hard, because every weekday brings an average of 30 to 50 deal reports. So if we did this analysis tomorrow, with one more pre-LBF day of reports included the limited-window data would increase. Therefore, below we are going to show you some data from the past month as well as year-to-date deal totals. First up is year-to-date […]
Corporate: HMH Buys Tribal Nova; Penguin Partners with Mind Candy; Amazon Defends “Heavy Investments”
Two new acquisitions highlight publishers’ increasing interest in game development. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced they acquired Montreal-based educational technology company Tribal Nova, which develops digital games, products and services for pre-school children. The Tribal Nova team will continue to operate out of Montreal, though they will be absorbed into HMH’s Content and Product Innovation group, dedicated to the incubation and development of next-generation content for both K-12 and consumer markets. “The combination of Tribal Nova’s game development expertise with HMH’s proven educational content and learning design capabilities will enable HMH to bring a more holistic and personalized gaming experience to market,” […]