The Quarto Group disclosed that two significant shareholders — Harwood Capital and Wellcome Trust — have sold their holdings in the company. As a result, Harwood managing partner Christopher Mills will step down from his position as a non-executive director of the company when a replacement has been appointed. Mills notes in the announcement, “In the three years since Harwood took a hands-on approach to our investment in Quarto with the support of Wellcome and others, the share price has improved by close to 50 percent. The corporate governance of the company is now in accordance with best practice, the management team of Tim Chadwick, Chairman, and Marcus […]
Archives for November 2015
People: Funke’s Start-Up Publisher to be Distributed by PGW, and More
Author Cornelia Funke‘s new independent publishing house Breathing Books has a sales and distribution agreement with PGW for the US and Canada. Her first title, The Golden Yarn, is now set for publication on December 1, 2015. (When Funke originally announced that she was parting ways with Little, Brown Children’s and Chicken House in the UK, she was aiming for a November release of the book.) She says in the announcement, “I’m thrilled that Breathing Books has found a distribution partner in PGW. As they know about my passion for working with booksellers and finding the best ways to share my books with my North American […]
Kindle Unlimited Payment Drops Below Half A Cent Per Page
Amazon announced their retroactive pool of money to compensate their exclusive, self-published authors for titles read through the Kindle Unlimited subscription program in October. The company allocated $12.4 million — up from $12 million in September — but pages read grew more than dollars allocated, so the payment per page dropped to $.004809. As KU authors quickly noted online, the payment per page has declined every month since Amazon switched to paying by pages read rather than books borrowed. The payments started at $.005779 per page for July. The total pool of money paid out has grown $900,000 since July […]
Germany Antitrust Office Investigates Audible and iTunes Exclusive Sales Agreement
Following a complaint lodged by Germany’s Publishers and Booksellers Association in September, the country’s Federal Cartel Office (Bundeskartellamt) announced on Monday that it “has initiated administrative proceedings against the Amazon subsidiary Audible.com and Apple Computer Inc,” regarding their “long-term agreement” that has Audible as the exclusive supplier of audiobooks to the iTunes Store. President of the Federal Cartel Office Andreas Mundt says in the statement: “Both companies hold a strong position in the market for digital audiobooks in Germany. We therefore see ourselves obliged to examine more closely the agreement between these two competitors. The audiobook publishers need to have sufficient alternative channels for […]
People: Morgan to Leave HarperCollins
As some authors found out at the beginning of the week, editorial director for Harper Paperback and Perennial Cal Morgan will be leaving HarperCollins on November 20 after 16 years at the company. He writes on Facebook: “After the past few years of intensive work, I’ve increasingly felt the need to take a pause, to seed my own garden for a while, to read books I haven’t read, do some writing, and start planning some new projects of my own. So it’s with mingled sorrow and joy that I’m calling November 20 my last day at HarperCollins. My authors will […]
Corporate: Expanded S&S Library Option, Expanding Orbit, and More
Simon & Schuster is testing an expansion of their business proposition for library ebook lending. Announced by Overdrive on their blog, the new pilot offers an expanded two-year lending term for a roster of about 550 titles, with the second year priced at 50 percent of the one-year lending sales price. The starting selection includes at least some bestsellers and frontlist releases. Hachette Book Group’s sci-fi/fantasy imprint Orbit will increase the number of titles it publishes by 50 percent starting with the fall 2016 season, growing to about 90 titles a year. The line says it will hire additional editorial, marketing, and design staff to […]