Amazon has partnered with Purdue University in Indiana on the Purdue Student Store, which will not only offer discounted physical and digital textbooks, but, in early 2015, will also bring staffed customer order pickup and drop-off locations to Purdue’s campus, as well as expedited shipping benefits phased in over the course of the 2014-2015 academic year. It’s Amazon’s second co-branded college store after the first, with University of California, Davis, launched last year. Founder and former managing director of the Book Depository Kieron Smith has launched his new online bookselling venture, Best Little Bookshop, in beta. Smith, who left Book […]
Archives for August 2014
People, Etc.
Julie MacKay has joined Scribd as manager, content acquisition, working out of the company’s New York office. Previously she worked as a foreign rights manager for Janklow & Nesbit. In addition, Greg Freed has been named content operations specialist, working from Scribd’s San Francisco office. Previously he was director of production and distribution at RosettaBooks. On Tuesday NY Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan sharply criticized the paper’s reporting earlier this month on a plagiarism claim against Rick Perlstein‘s THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE. After fielding letters from those including Jeffrey Toobin, who characterized Perlstein’s chief accuser, Craig Shirley as “a right-leaning writer […]
Writer’s Digest Tries Self-Publishing Again With BookBaby; RosettaBooks Expands Into Print; and More
Writer’s Digest quietly severed ties with Author Solutions, which provided the back-end to its self-publishing service Abbott Press , earlier this year. Now the company has teamed up with BookBaby for a different self-publishing program under the name Blue Ash Publishing. The new program takes pain to distinguish itself from the earlier one, touting “100 percent net earnings” once retailers are paid their percentages, and “no commission” taken by BookBaby, “total creative control” including full rights ownership to the author, “exclusive education programs” that include weekly newsletters, and for those who pay more, access to Writers Market, and other digital […]
People, Etc.
At St. Martin’s Press, Dori Weintraub has returned full time to the publicity department as vp, publicity, with an enhanced and expanded role working on a wide array of fiction and nonfiction across all teams. Weintraub, most recently vp, marketing, communications & audience development, will report to Tracey Guest, who said in a statement: “Everyone who has worked with Dori Weintraub in the past fourteen years can attest to the passion, fierce intelligence and dedication which she brings to her work. She’s recognized by national media and reviewers as a force in the industry. Since media coverage is critical to […]
Quarto Results Fall In “Tough First Half”
Quarto Group reported results for the first half of 2014, with sales down 3 percent to $65.6 million (declining $6.6 million) and operating profit down slightly at $2.77 million (dropping more than $200,000). CEO Marcus Leaver said in the release, “Despite a tough first half we expect the new product and the marketing & sales initiatives that we invested, in 2013, to deliver a strong second half in our publishing businesses. There are positive signs of the turnaround we targeted in the Books & Gifts Direct business in Australia and New Zealand. The Group should deliver earnings growth in 2014 as […]
Doughty Tops September Library Reads
Caitlin Doughty’s Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory tops the September Library Reads list which also includes The Secret Place by Tana French, which you can start reading right now in our fall/winter Publishers Lunch Buzz Books sampler. The rest of the list features: Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel Rooms, by Lauren Oliver The Children Act, by Ian McEwan The Distance, by Helen Giltrow Horrorstor, by Grady Hendrix The Paying Guests, by Sarah Waters The Witch With No Name, by Kim Harrison Season of Storms, by Susanna Kearsley