Quail Ridge Books & Music in Raleigh, North Carolina will be sold at the end of month, store founder Nancy Olson announced late last week. The new owner, according to the Raleigh News-Observer, is Lisa Robie Poole, married to Waste Industries CEO Lonnie C. “Ven” Poole III (who is also a benefactor of North Carolina State University). Olson, who decided to sell the bookstore last November, will stay on for three months as part of a transitional period, with the sale officially closing on July 31. Poole told a crowd of store customers Friday she has no plans to change […]
Archives for July 2013
Rowling Published This Spring Quietly As “Robert Galbraith”
JK Rowling has confessed that she authored the crime novel THE CUCKOO’S CALLING, published in April to at least some positive reviews and very modest sales (441 print units in the UK, and about the same in the US, as tracked by Nielsen Bookscan). Rowling was unmasked by The Sunday Times “after it investigated how a first-time author ‘with a background in the army and the civilian security industry’ could write such an assured debut novel.” Actually, as the paper’s books editor Richard Brooks admitted, columnist India Knight was first set on the story by an anonymous Twitter tip (from an account […]
Literary Group Combines with Folio
Folio Literary Management announced that as of July 1, they have combined with Literary Group International, continuing to operate together under the Folio name. LGI’s president Frank Weimann is now senior vice president and director of operations at Folio, with Katherine Latshaw and Jeff Silberman continuing as agents. Weimann says in the announcement, “It’s a great chance to combine our strengths and make something better. We complement each other, and we feel confident that our list going forward will be twice as strong.” One of Folio’s founding partners Scott Hoffman (who spoke on our Publishers Launch BEA panel about agencies […]
People, Etc.
Anthony Cheetham is stepping down as ceo of Head of Zeus in January 2014, though he will retain the role of chairman. Replacing him as ceo and publisher is Amanda Ridout, who will join the company on September 4. Ridout was most recently managing director of Phaidon Press, and before then managing director of HarperCollins UK. “I am delighted to join the team at such an exciting time in the company’s development,” Ridout said in a statement. “After just a year in existence they have already got a strong list of authors and I look forward to building on these […]
Restructuring, or Bankruptcy, Looms for Spain’s Prisa
This spring Spanish media reports touted the idea that troubled Spanish media conglomerate Prisa Group was looking to sell book publisher Alfaguara — possibly to Random House. The company admitted it was “in talks for the transmission of this asset and other Grupo Prisa assets with various partners.” With no deals yet, the WSJ now reports that Prisa is considering a bankruptcy filing — in the US or Spain — possibly as a negotiation technique with lenders as they look to refinance or restructure approximately $3 billion in debt. A short-term loan provided in early June while restructuring discussions were […]
Penguin Has New eBook Pricing, and Random House Should Follow Shortly
Mainstream media has been scrambling to come up with some kind of impact for consumers related to Judge Denise Cote’s verdict against Apple handed down Wednesday morning, but for now there really isn’t any. (For a refresher, we had looked in early June at what the government said it would want from Apple if they prevailed.) Less noticed — well, not noticed at all until this article, really — is that retailers recently, finally, started to exercise their right to discount selected Penguin ebooks. Given how “consumers suffered in a variety of ways from [the] scheme to eliminate retail price […]