Cecelia Cancellaro, founder of Word Creative Literary Services, will join Cambridge University Press in early December as senior editor in US and Latin American history, based in New York. Awards In the UK, the Costa Book Awards announced its shortlists in five categories. Sara Collins’ The Confessions of Frannie Langton, a finalist for the first novel prize, is excerpted and available for download in our Buzz Books 2019 Fall/Winter sampler. Other nominees include: Novel Middle England, by Jonathan Coe (Knopf/Viking) Confession with Blue Horses, by Sophie Hardach (Head of Zeus) Starling Days, by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan (Sceptre) Shadowplay, by Joseph O’Connor (Harvill Secker) […]
Archives for November 2019
Bookselling: BN Renegotiates Lease, More Holiday Shipping Offers
Barnes & Noble has been negotiating with their landlord in Coral Springs, FL over the renewal of their lease, which expires in February. By the landlord’s account, BN has said it cannot operate the 27,000-square-foot store profitably, and wants to renew for a store of only 12,000 to 13,000 square feet, at a lower lease rate. Simon & Schuster has expanded its rapid replenishment program this holiday season to cover all independent booksellers nationwide. And Scholastic has launched their holiday Indie Express Ship program. In “bestseller” news, two weeks after their release, five of six individually-sold Dean Koontz stories occupy […]
Thanks, and Giving
Since PublishersMarketplace.com was started just over 18 years ago (a year and half or so after we created Publishers Lunch), our constant focus has been on doing more for our members all the time. This year we have spent a lot of effort on explaining ourselves better — through deal reporting tips and policies, a big writer’s guide to PM, live tours and now a condensed video tour of some of our key features, and even a short video showing some of what’s behind the paywall for non-members. (We’ve also helped explain the business itself through the years-in-the-making new initiative […]
People, Etc.
At Trident Media Group, Martha Wydysh and Sulamita Garbuz have both been promoted to associate agents. Nora Rawn joins as foreign rights agent. She was most recently senior editor for Lonely Planet. The late Monika Schoeller, longtime publisher of S. Fischer Verlag and daughter of publisher Georg von Holtzbrinck, was remembered at a service in Germany on Monday. Best Of The New York Times Book Review released its list of 100 Notable Books of 2019. That joins the list of top 100 books from the Washington Post, and the big best books of the year package from the NY Public […]
Scribd Raises $58 Million, As Some of Those Unauthorized Snapshots Have Been Removed
Subscription service Scribd announced raising $58 million in equity financing from Spectrum Equity. They say the funds will be used “to continue to operate sustainably and efficiently while accelerating our growth, product innovations, content acquisition and continued investment in our employees.” Despite the raise, Scribd has said that it has been profitable since 2016 — even declaring its model “more profitable than we wanted” before going back to mostly unlimited access in early 2018. Scribd irritated a number of key partners earlier this summer among authors, agents and publishers when they launched their Snapshots program without permission, creating their own […]
10-Digit ISBNs Will Be Gone for Good Next Year
The Book Industry Study Group’s Metadata Committee presented information about Bowker’s plans to introduce new 979 prefix for book ISBNs starting in early 2020, as demand for the existing 978-prefix blocks has diminished the available inventory. But the introduction of a new prefix block means more than just an expansion of available ISBNs: It means that “for the first time in the US market” since the move to 13-digits ISBNs in 2007, “there will be no 10-digit equivalent to a 979 ISBN.” As result, everyone will now have to be fully 13-digit compliant; there will be no more getting away […]