The first six books in Jeff Kinney’s DIARY OF A WIMPY KID series, which have sold more than 75 million copies worldwide, will finally be available in ebook format as of October 30, while the newly arriving seventh volume, DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: THE THIRD WHEEL, will be published simultaneously in print and digital on November 13. “The decision came after a lot of thought and deliberation,” Kinney told the AP. “I am very excited about this. It feels like the time is right.” Published under a new banner of Wimp-E-Books, the digital editions will list for $13.95, at […]
People, Etc.: Random Plans “Open House”
Dan Ambrosio has joined Da Capo Books as a senior editor. He was at Wiley for the last four years, and has worked at Vigliano Associates and Warner Books. Deborah Ritchken has joined the Marsal Lyon Literary Agency, working primarily in the areas of food, design and entertaining; pop culture; women’s issues; biography; and current events. She was with The Castiglia Agency. Random House is inviting the public to buy tickets (at $25 each, including breakfast and lunch) to an “open house” at their headquarters building in New York on November 2. The full-day event promises “access to upcoming titles before they’re […]
Corporate: Swann Steps Down as CEO of WHSmith; Final Suitors for McGraw-Hill Education;HarperCollins Moves to Streamline Global Publishing Infrastructure; and More
Kate Swann will step down as ceo of WHSmith on June 30 after more than nine years, the company announced Thursday. She will be replaced by current managing director of Smith’s high street business Steve Clarke. “It is an opportune time to make a change of leadership, and I am sure that the company will continue to thrive under Steve,” Swann told the FT. She didn’t elaborate further on future plans but said she “certainly doesn’t intend to retire.” The news was announced in tandem with the release of WHSmith’s preliminary full-year results, in which pre-tax profits rose 9.7 percent […]
People: Mo Yan Wins Nobel
The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded Thursday morning to Chinese writer Mo Yan, with the citation praising him for his “hallucinatory realism” that “merges folk tales, history and the contemporary.” Mo, a pseudonym for Guan Moye, is one of China’s best-selling (and most pirated) authors in the country, and his work, according to the Swedish Academy, “created a world reminiscent in its complexity of those in the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez, at the same time finding a departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition.” Mo was said to be “overjoyed and terrified” […]
eNews: Consortium Launches Thema Global Codes Standard
In an attempt to streamline book category and classification codes into a unified standard, a group of book industry representatives from 15 companies are joining forces on Thema, which continues the work already begun by the iBIC project jointly owned by Nielsen and the Book Industry Communication. Both entities donated the iBIC intellectual property to Thema’s board of directors for the creation of the global standard. For now, Thema will function alongside such national book-categorization standards as BIC, BISAC, and CLIL, but the plan is to move all involved markets, including the US, UK, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Spain, and […]
People
At OverDrive, Don Fabricant has been named general manager, education and chief sales. He previously held executive posts at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Eduventures and Thomson Learning. Suzanna Bainbridge has joined Sourcebooks as editorial manager for Sourcebooks EDU. Previously she was a development editor at Cengage Learning. In addition, Sarah Henry has been hired as a marketing associate, working on Sourcebooks new digital initiatives. She was most recently an editorial assistant at McGraw-Hill. Former Books-a-Million executive Douglas Markham followed his allegations against his former employer with a lawsuit, alleging wrongful termination due to his military service. The suit, filed October 5, […]