Malcolm Gladwell deftly moved on from his Wednesday remarks at BEA’s IDPF conference at a party thrown by publisher Little, Brown for his forthcoming book David and Goliath on Thursday night. He referred to his “disaster of yesterday” when he apparently “said I was in favor of turning the New York Public library into condos,” remarking facetiously “who knew that people would be offended by that?”Gladwell was pitch-perfect in telling his own retelling of the David and Goliath story that sets the theme for his next book. As with the Paul Revere story that was one of the signatures of […]
Archives for May 2013
“Difficult Negotiations” Persist Between S&S and B&N, Limiting Author Events, Too
One controversy not evident on the BEA show floor but still very heated off the floor is the stand-off on terms between Barnes & Noble and Simon & Schuster that has resulted in reduced business between the publisher and the bookseller since the beginning of the year. (For some publishers, discussion of revamped terms with B&N began last summer, and we’re told there is renewed pressure from the booksellers on those who have not changed business terms.) It landed back on the radar when S&S author William Kent Krueger blogged that he was told to cancel two events scheduled for […]
Here At the Hothouse
Weather metaphors make it easy to declare this year’s Book Expo America a “hot” show and indeed we had the title of Boris Kachka’s forthcoming August book Hothouse: The Art of Survival and the Survival of Art at America’s Most Celebrated Publishing House, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, on our minds many times Thursday, in the aisles and across the evening of parties. But here’s a little secret of trade show reporting: Look back and you’ll see that nearly every show (except for those convened on the eve of lawsuits and world economic crises) is dutifully reported as having an upbeat […]
People, Etc.
Sarah Harrison Smith has been named children’s editor at the New York Times Book Review. She was most recently on the paper’s metropolitan desk. Scholastic unveiled the new cover designed by Kazu Kubuishi for HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS, which will be published on August 27 (along with the other redesigned books in the series) at BEA Thursday morning. At the Audiobook Publishers Association’s Audie Awards ceremony last night at the New-York Historical Society, Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair (read by Colin Firth, Audible) was named named Audiobook of the Year and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (multi-voiced […]
ABA Sales “Hold Our Own” After Strong 2012
ABA ceo Oren Teicher shared continuing positive sales news with member booksellers at the organization’s annual meeting on Thursday afternoon at BEA. “As you know, unit sales in our channel, as reported to our weekly Indie Bestseller List, were up almost 8 percent last year,” Teicher said. “This year we are seeing the good news continue, as we hold our own in unit sales for 2013 against a first quarter in 2012 that saw very strong double-digit growth.” The coming NPR promotional campaign run by Kobo is “a direct assault” on the problem that “Kobo remains the most successful e-book […]
Tech: Ingram’s New Tool for Independent Publishers; Libre Rolls Out Digital Distribution; BookScout Adds Mobile; 3M Provides Daily Data;
Ingram will launch a new self-service “publish-on-demand” platform for independent publishers, IngramSpark, this summer. It combines their Lighting Source (print-in-demand) and Core Source (digital asset distribution) services in a single toolset, to manage print and ebook distribution under one umbrella. General Manager of Ingram Publisher Services Mark Ouimet says “independent publishers will now have access to Ingram’s reach, enabling them to affordably print copies, distribute books to global retailers, make titles available to all major e-readers and connect with more customers worldwide.” After the initial launch, Ingram plans to add versions of some of their other services to the platform, including MyiLibrary […]