As sometimes happens when you get a little older, with the big election and early arrival Thanksgiving we decided to postpone marking the anniversary of PublishersMarketplace.com for a month. Now just over 17 years old, we’re almost legal and getting ready for our adulthood. The standard reminder: Publishers Lunch is older by about a year and half, though we didn’t know we were starting something when we started, so there’s no easy day to mark. PublishersMarketplace was a second start-up, that involved some actual investment and physically going live on the internet — inauspiciously near the trough of the burst […]
Archives for December 2018
Corporate: Australian Online Bookseller to Sell Crowdfunded Stock
Australian online bookseller Booktopia has a new plan to raise investment capital after dropping a plan to go public in late 2016. The company is using crowdfunding platform Equitise to raise between $3 million and $10 million (AU), Books and Publishing reports. They are selling 8.1 percent of the business, which had sales of $113 million in the most recent fiscal year (approximately $83.5 million US), with $1.9 million in profit. Booktopia CEO Tony Nash says, “We have always said that our customers have been our investors because they bought books from us and we used those funds to re-invest […]
People, Etc.
Alive Literary Agency founder and CEO Rick Christian will step down March 1 after 30 years, and the agency has been sold internally to president Bryan Norman and evp Lisa Jackson. “I am grateful I could spend the bulk of my working years doing what I love with people I adore, realize my dreams, and accomplish the tasks with which I was entrusted,” said Christian. “There is no greater joy than to now pass the baton to such qualified successors.” Christian will work with novelist Karen Kingsbury and her son Tyler Russell and consult with the agency for three years […]
As Brazilian Book Trade Struggles, A Call for Support
Brazil’s book trade is suffering mightily from bankruptcy reorganization filings over the past month from the country’s two largest bookstore chains, Cultura and Saraiva. The latter reported debt of approximately $168 million, and among their top creditors is Editora Schwarcz / Companhia das Letras — where Penguin Random House recently boosted their stake to a majority share — which is owed close to $5 million. Publisher Luis Schwarcz explained the situation recently in an open “love letter to books” that is being passed around widely. He notes, “I experienced one of the worst moments of my personal and professional life when, […]
Picks: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and More
Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield is Amazon’s Spotlight Pick for December, and they skipped a featured debut this month. The rest of the list: How Long ‘Til Black Future Month?, by N.K. Jemisin Kingdom of the Blind, by Louise Penny Milkman, by Anna Burns This is Cuba, by David Ariosto The Dakota Winters, by Tom Barbash The Museum of Modern Love, by Heather Rose North of Dawn, by Nuruddin Farah Watching You, by Lisa Jewell The Day the Sun Died, by Yan Lianke Barnes & Noble chose only four fiction titles to highlight this month, including: Verses for the […]