Brooklyn’s Greenlight Bookstore officially launches this Saturday. With many booksellers talking to local newspapers about the bestseller price wars, we decided to round up some of the remarks: “Unless those massive chains start discounting all hardcover books, the independents will be fine,” Murphy said. “We’ll just stop selling the New York Times bestsellers, and sell more of the books we love.” Liz Murphy, owner of The Learned Owl Book ShopHudson, OH “I’m tickled pink (that Wal-Mart and Amazon.com are fighting), and I’m hoping that they lose a lot of money.”Jane Kessler, owner of Appletree BooksCleveland Heights, OH “It’s a totally […]
Barnes & Noble's Nook: The Takeaway
As you probably know, Barnes & Noble officially debuted their new ereader Nook, which corresponds directly to the leaked details: an E-Ink screen for reading plus a color LCD mini-touchscreen for browsing, a pop-up keyboard, and some day Android apps and more. It’s priced to match Kindle at $259, but unfortunately will not ship until November 30, cutting it close to the holidays. (The company can only bring itself to say “late November,” but that’s the reported ship date from a customer.) Although they are obviously following Amazon’s lead the company kept insisting it’s the real innovator. CEO Steve Riggio […]
Kinney Connects with His Readers
This week it was Wimpy Kid creator Jeff Kinney’s turn to the lift the marketplace, with a big opening for his latest installment in the series, DOG DAYS. Sales tracked by Nielsen Bookscan were approximately 507,000 copies–more than twice the big opening for Kinney’s THE LAST STRAW at the beginning of the year. Abrams CEO Michael Jacobs says the house’s own tracking estimates a first-week sale that “exceeds 750,000 copies” through the trade overall. They have gone back to press for another 500,000 copies (after an announced first printing of 4 million copies). Jacobs notes that Kinney’s backlist sales were […]
People
At Dutton, Ben Sevier has been promoted to executive editor. Agent Amy Tipton has left FinePrint Literary Management to join Signature Literary Agency. Former Pantheon publisher Janice Goldklang has joined Globe Pequot Press as executive director of editorial. The Frankfurt Book Fair has fired project manager Peter Ripken, saying in a statement it was for “ongoing difficulties.” As Deutsche World notes, it was Ripken who “uninvited” two Chinese dissidents from that pre-Fair symposium (leading to the Book Fair’s series of denials and apologies). As they report it, Ripken also kept those same two dissidents from speaking at the book fair’s […]
HP's BookPrep Adds Another Log to the Content Explosion Fire
Earlier this year when the University of Michigan announced that they would sell over 400,000 public domain books scanned from their collection in a partnership with BookSurge/Amazon, they made it clear this first agreement was a nonexclusive relationship. Now Hewlett Packard has officially announced their BookPrep service, which prepares scanned books for print-on-demand and online viewing, which even includes “a rich set of predefined cover templates.” The University of Michigan is one of HP’s partners, helping to drive the availability for sale of almost 500,000 public domain books and counting. HP says their process “significantly drives down the cost of […]
OR Books Goes Rogue with Initial Release
The direct-sale start-up OR Books, founded by John Oakes and Colin Robinson, announced their inaugural title yesterday–which just happens to share some striking similarities with another prominent forthcoming release. OR Books is issuing GOING ROUGE: Sarah Palin, An American Nightmare on November 17, the same day when HarperCollins publishes GOING ROGUE: An American Life by Sarah Palin. Comprising essays assembled by Nation editors Richard Kim and Betsy Reed, it promises “progressive perspectives on Sarah Palin’s political career” by writers including Naomi Klein, Jane Mayer, Katha Pollitt, Jim Hightower, Christopher Hayes, Gloria Steinem, Joe Conason, and Tom Frank. Harper had […]