Anthony Astarita will join Rodale as svp, general manager for digital and brand development on January 3, according to the NYT. Astarita has been vp, general manager for e-commerce and digital products at Barnes & Noble for the past 3 years (helping to develop and market the Nook line of digital products) and joined the company in 1998. Rodale ceo and chairwoman Maria Rodale said in a statement that Astarita brought “a wealth of digital expertise and notable credibility to the ambitious digital efforts Rodale has set for 2012 and beyond. He’s poised to expand our global digital business to […]
People, Etc.
Hilary Redmon will join Ecco as executive editor, focusing on non-fiction, starting on December 19. She has been a senior editor at Free Press. Literary agent Emmanuelle Morgen will join Stonesong on January 5, representing adult and children’s fiction, including women’s fiction and romance, historical fiction, and young adult fiction, and nonfiction in the areas of psychology, pop science, self-help, and memoir. Morgen has been at Judith Ehrlich Literary Management. In the rapidly-consolidating Dutch publishing world, NDC/VBK will put its imprints Contact, Mouria and Augustus together with the two Amstel imprints LJ Veen and Atlas to form a new publishing […]
Briefs: Indie Bookscan Holiday Sales Up 15.5 Percent; Bloomsbury’s New Literary Events Line; and More
The ABA announced that member in-store book sales over the Thanksgiving holiday long weekend, as tracked by Bookscan, increased 15.5 percent over the same week in 2010. Sales in store websites powered by ABA IndieCommerce also increased by 60 percent for the same weekend (plus Cyber Monday) as compared to last year. Ann Patchett’s STATE OF WONDER and Laura Hillenbrand’s UNBROKEN topped the Indie bestseller lists for hardcover fiction and non-fiction, respectively, in 2011. Indie Bestseller Lists page Also from the ABA, this year’s Winter Institute 7 in January will feature a new One Institute, One Read program. Tying in […]
People, Etc.
PGW will distribute four new clients as of Spring 2012: Paper Punk Books, Tara Books, Readers to Eaters, and Watershed Media. Watershed will also use Constellation for ebook distribution, as will existing PGW client Night Shade Books. Pauline Hsia has joined the Doris S. Michaels Agency as an assistant. She was most recently with the Queens Ledger. Novelist and film critic Gilbert Adair, 66, died earlier this month. Novels by Adair were the basis for the films LOVE AND DEATH IN LONG ISLAND (1997) and THE DREAMERS (2003), and he also wrote film columns for the Sunday Times and the Guardian. Obit
KDP Select, The $6 Million Fund For Kindle Direct Authors, Is Live
Amazon now made official what we reported was in the works last month: Authors who publish their work through Kindle Direct Publishing exclusively have the option of putting their titles into the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library, compensated through pro-rated shares of a fund “expected to be at least” $6 million for all of 2012 (beginning with $500,000 allocated for the month of December). Titles must be exclusive to the Kindle store for a minimum of 90 days (which is a reduction from the 180 days Amazon initially sought from some authors). If books are currently available through multiple retailers, authors […]
Amazon Enters Children’s Book Market By Acquiring Marshall Cavendish’s Trade List
Amazon announced Tuesday afternoon that it has a deal to acquire Marshall Cavendish Children’s Book’s US trade publishing list, comprising more than 450 children’s books. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Amazon will publish the acquired titles “under an imprint of Amazon’s New York publishing unit” under Larry Kirshbaum, who is now described as publisher of Amazon Publishing, East Coast Group, vaulting the company into the children’s book market. Signaling larger intentions, the company says in the announcement “the acquisition creates the foundation for Amazon Publishing to further expand into picture books, chapter books and YA novels.” The deal allows Marshall Cavendish […]