The Bone Clocks is the top selection of ABA booksellers for September. Their list also includes 5 of our Publishers Lunch Fall/Winter Buzz Books — by Matthew Thomas, Jessie Burton, Katy Simpson Smith, Nayomi Munaweera, and Tana French — Download our free sampler from any ebookstore (or from the Buzz home page) to read substantial excerpts from all 5 Indie Next authors and more now. #1: The Bone Clocks, by David Mitchell Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel Neverhome, by Laird Hunt We Are Not Ourselves, by Matthew Thomas The Miniaturist, by Jessie Burton Accidents of Marriage, by Randy […]
Archives for July 2014
Amazon Dispute Has “Limited” Or No Effect on Lagardere Publishing Results
Lagardere reported first-half of the year results after the close of the market in France on Thursday. Sales at Lagardere Publishing were 510 million euros in the second quarter (up 12 million euros) — and 903 million euros for the full first half, up 2.5 percent on a like-for-like basis for the quarter but down 1.5 percent (or 14 million euros) in actual results because of foreign exchange. Earnings did fall to 51 million euros, down 28 percent from 71 million euros a year ago, due to an “exceptionally rich” publishing program in the first half of 2013. The company answered the big […]
Closing the Book On Kindle Unlimited Bestsellers
As we have demonstrated pretty definitively over the past two weeks, the introduction of Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited subscription service has shown their hourly Kindle “best seller” list — and therefore the entire “sales rank” system — to be a fiction of merchandising rather than a ranking of titles by actual, paid individual unit sales. Not only are subscription “reads” counted towards the sales and best seller rank, but now that participants have seen the effect on their own sales, it’s clear that even subscription “checkouts” are counted. (So as soon as a KU member downloads a title, that counts towards […]
Corporate: Perseus Sale Postponed; Mondadori Merges Children’s Imprints
The closing of the sale of the Perseus Books Group to Hachette — with the distribution businesses to be sold in turn to Ingram Content Group — has been postponed past the intended July 31 date. That closing date always seemed ambitious, since the complicated three-way agreement was not executed until June 24, though up until a few days ago the parties were proceeding on track with that closing date. Indeed, HBG indicated to us in a brief statement, “This transaction is more complex because there are three parties involved and so more time is needed.” Perseus employees were told by email […]
People, Etc.
Ten Speed Press announced a number of promotions and new hires. In the publicity and marketing departments, Lorraine Woodcheke has been named marketing & publicity manager, cookbooks, while Natalie Mulford moves up to marketing and publicity manager, Watson-Guptill and Amphoto Books. In the design department, Betsy Stromberg has been promoted to senior art director while Chloe Rawlins moves up to senior design manager. Kara Plikaitis has been named senior art director and Ashley Lima joins as art director. Finally, Tatiana Pavola has been named junior designer, while Anitra Alcantara joins as production designer. At Potter Style, Jay Sacher has been […]
Update re: Awkward Amazon Communications On Amazon/Hachette Business Interruption
As most of our readership has likely seen by now, on Tuesday afternoon the Amazon Books team put up another unsigned, closed to comment post (or what Barry Eisler would call a shameful “pointless, pernicious, promiscuous anonymity”) on the Kindle Forum. The post is said to offer “specific information about Amazon’s objectives” in their negotiations with Hachette Book Group. If you have not read the post yet, check it out. It raises many questions, among them: – Amazon is very careful with their words, even if not elegant. The post begins, “A key objective is lower e-book prices.” A lot of traditional […]