Pew’s latest survey on digital reading habits in America, released Thursday, points to a rise in e-reading but not necessarily at the expense of print. Surveying 1005 adults over a three-day period earlier this month, Pew found that 28 percent of respondents had read an ebook in 2013, up from 23 percent the previous year. Of those surveyed, 76 percent of American adults ages 18 and older said that they read at least one book in the past year. (The average number was 12 books annually; the mean was 5 books.) Interestingly, Pew found that the highest percentage of those […]
Archives for January 2014
Corporate: Bloomsbury Finishes Well; Russian Publishers Merge
Bloomsbury issued a brief trading update on sales for the last four months of 2013. “In line with expectations,” sales rose 20 percent compared to a year ago, with “most of the growth generated from print sales.” Their sales had been up 13 percent for the first half of the year, helped by both trade hits and their continuing string of academic and professional publishing acquisitions. Separately, Russia’s two biggest trade publishers have completed the merger they began some time ago, with Eksmo finalizing their purchase of AST. The purchase price was not disclosed. Publishing Perspectives reports that Eksmo owner Oleg Novikov […]
People, Etc.
In the Random House Special Markets Group, Christine Dillon has been promoted to senior sales director, premium and proprietary sales. Cathy Serpico moves up to imprint sales manager, and Lauren Helman has been promoted to sales manager, specialty retail. At Transatlantic Literary Agency, Stephanie Sinclair and Amy Tompkins have been promoted to associate agent. The Oscar nominations were announced Thursday morning. Among the book-based films in contention for top honors, Philomena, 12 Years A Slave and The Wolf of Wall Street were all nominated for best picture, and Dirty Wars is nominated for best documentary. Also announced Thursday morning were […]
Simon & Schuster Expands Library eBook Pilot; Guinness Moves to Macmillan
Simon & Schuster’s small pilot program for digital library lending is expanding to add 15 public libraries served by OverDrive. As with the initial efforts at New York City libraries, S&S will make available its full catalog of ebooks, offering unlimited checkouts for a year on a one copy/one user basis. The company has said previously that their library pricing is “a little bit more” than their ebook list prices. “We are pleased to expand our eBook distribution in libraries through this pilot with OverDrive,” Simon & Schuster vp, global ebook market development and strategy Doug Stambaugh said in the […]
Stock Expert Cramer Says Amazon Shares Are “Modern Art”
Later in the morning television host and author of the just-released Get Rich Carefully Jim Cramer provided an investment view of publishing and the larger media landscape. Extending the morning’s discussion, he said, “I simply don’t know how to stop Amazon. It’s not constrained by the need to make money. It’s modern art. It’s Jackson Pollock. It can’t be explained. It’s a Rothko, and everyone else is Rembrandt — and everyone else is worth a lot less.” At the same time, Cramer noted, “it is the best multi-year growth story out there.” Ironically, because the share price is fueled by […]
DBW Survey Points to Author Dissatisfaction With Traditional and Self-Publishing
Having already offered a sneak peek at some of the results, CUNY professor Dana Beth Weinberg presented some additional data and analysis of the Digital Book World and Writer’s Digest author survey, which focused on the advantages and disadvantages of traditional publishing and self-publishing. While the survey pointed to some obvious conclusions — namely that “authors in general do not seem overly pleased with their publishing experiences, whether with traditional publishing or self-publishing — it offered up some interesting data points about preference, such as 24.1 percent of traditionally published surveyed authors being “very satisfied” with the pricing of their […]