At Paper Lantern Lit, Tara Sonin has been promoted to marketing associate. Liz Button has joined the ABA‘s content team as a writer/researcher for Bookselling This Week, and Naya Moss is a new hire on the booksellers’ association’s technology team, providing general technological assistance to ABA staff. Author or co-author of 21 books and well-known Jesus scholar Marcus Borg, 72, died on Wednesday. Harper One publisher Mark Tauber said in a statement, “His life and his work have been a challenge, a comfort and an inspiration to literally millions of readers and students over the years. Marcus was unafraid to follow the […]
Archives for January 2015
Publishing Technology Realigns Revenues, Negotiates with New Investor
Software and services provider Publishing Technology announced that their recognized revenues and operating loss for 2014 will be “materially below market expectations.” One part was planned, as the company implemented a realignment of revenue recognition that reduces 2014’s results and will boost sales and margins in 2015 and 2016. The second part, however, is attributed to “one major advance project, the scope of which has changed since inception.” Separately, the company said it “is in early stage discussions with an overseas third party” interested in making “a substantial investment” in Publishing Technology. They are discussing the sale of “a considerable minority interest,” via the issuing […]
Amazon Launches Self-Published Textbook Creator, KDP EDU
Apple launched iBooks Author all the way back in early 2012, so the only surprise about Amazon’s new self-published digital textbook platform, KDP EDU, is that it took so long. The public beta of Amazon’s Kindle Textbook Creator tool allows educators to turn PDFs of their textbooks and course materials into Kindle books. Available features include flashcards, multi-color highlighting, and the ability to capture key phrases and images and save them to a single location. (Textbooks created with Amazon’s tool are “only available through the Kindle store,” per Amazon’s EULA, just as Apple limits ebooks created with their software to their store.) KDP director […]
DBW Author Survey: Whether Traditional or Indie Published, the Windfall is Low
In conjunction with last week’s big Digital Book World Conference, DBW.com released their latest author survey in conjunction with Writers Digest, The Author-Publisher Relationship In a Changing Market, with analysis by Dana Beth Weinberg. This year’s report takes a fresh approach, focusing on “different modes of publishing based on allocation of risk and distribution of rewards.” It points to some key divisions in thinking and strategy between authors who publish traditionally and those who publish independently (or do both), but ultimately demonstrates that the windfall is minimal on average — and those who expect the streets of independent publishing to be lined with gold may need a […]
People
Agent Sara Megibow, who recently left the Nelson Literary Agency, is joining KT Literary. At Farrar, Straus, Brian Gittis and Steve Weil have both been promoted to assistant director of publicity. In addition, Sarah Scire has been promoted to publicist, and Lis McAvoy moves up to assistant publicist. At Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Stephanie Kim has been promoted to publicity manager. Rick Pascocello will leave his position as vp, executive marketing director at Penguin Random House at the end of the month after 23 years in publishing, mostly at Penguin. He can be reached at rpascocello@gmail.com. Imprint News: Carole Tonkinson‘s new inspirational lifestyle imprint at […]
With No Buyers, Egmont Will Simply Close US Publishing Division
After putting Egmont USA up for sale last October, parent company Egmont Publishing announced that it “has decided to close the office, effective from January 31,” since “attempts to sell” the unit “have not resulted in any final agreements.” January 30 will be the last day of employment for Egmont USA staff. But they will issue their spring 2015 list even without local staff, and their books will continue to be available through their distributor Random House. (Their spring 2015 catalog lists 10 titles for publication.) Six jobs will be eliminated when the US office closes. And recent PM deal reports […]