As promised earlier this fall, Amazon’s newest Kindle Stores launched Thursday in Spain and Italy, along with local-language Kindles retailing for 99 euros and the Kindle Direct Publishing service for authors and small publishers. The Italian Kindle Store features over 16,000 Italian-language Kindle titles, while the Spanish store offers more than 22,000 Spanish-language Kindle titles, including 3 exclusive backlist nonfiction titles self-published through KDP by El País journalist and bestselling author Rosa Montero. (Montero also has 2 Kindle titles available from her current publisher, Planeta imprint Seix Barral, and 4 more of her backlist books published with her agency Balcells in an earlier experiment […]
S&S Releases eBook Edition of Fahrenheit 451
Science fiction writer Ray Bradbury has finally overcome his longstanding aversion to digital books and authorized an ebook edition of his most famous novel, FAHRENHEIT 451, which Simon & Schuster released Tuesday. The ebook deal comes as part of a new publishing agreement brokered by Bradbury’s agent Michael Congdon with S&S that includes all English-language print and digital formats of FAHRENHEIT 451 in North America, and also includes English-language mass-market rights in North America to Bradbury’s THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES and THE ILLUSTRATED MAN, both of which will be reissued in March. The ebook edition of FAHRENHEIT, originally published in 1953, […]
Bookselling: Stores Closing in NJ, MA, and More
Metuchen, NJ-based new and used bookstore The Raconteur will close on January 31 after 7 years in business. “I still love being here and meeting the people,” owner Alex Dawson told the NYT. “But I feel like I don’t want to be a shop clerk anymore. That’s what it boils down to.” Cherry Picked Books in Easthampton, MA will also be closing at the end of January. Owner Michael Engel bought the store in 2007 and had been been “half-heartedly” looking for a buyer over the last several months. “Nobody wants to buy a used bookstore,” Engel told Masslive.com. “It’s […]
People
Sara O’Keeffe has joined Atlantic Books’ Corvus division as editorial director, replacing Nicolas Cheetham, who left to join his father Anthony at his new venture Head of Zeus. O’Keeffe was most recently a senior editor at Orion. Brigid Nelson has joined HarperCollins Children’s Books UK as divisional sales manager. She was most recently children’s product director at Penguin Children’s UK. Author and NYT political columnist Tom Wicker, 85, died on Friday, and poet Ruth Stone, 96, died earlier this month. Among her many accolades, Stone won the National Book Award, the NBCC award, two Guggenheims and a Whiting Award. Evolutionary […]
Bookselling: New Location for RiverRun; New Owner for New England Mobile Book Fair; and More
In an email to customers, RiverRun Bookstore owner Tom Holbrook said the store has signed a letter of intent, and will soon sign a lease, for a new retail space downtown, just two blocks away from its current location. The move, which Holbrook expects to be finalized by December, will save RiverRun $50,000 a year in costs, while on the financial side, “more than a dozen people have come forward and offered to become part-owners of RiverRun, and dozens more have donated books and money to the cause.” The New England Mobile Book Fair in Needham, MA, which has operated […]
Macmillan Reorganizes Sales Force, With Staff Reduction By The End of the Year
Macmillan is the latest large publishing house to reorganize its sales force, telling us they “will be making a small number of sales staff reductions at the end of the year.” President of sales Alison Lazarus said that six employees would be leaving the company, with an additional staffer set to retire by year’s end. Macmillan is reducing staff “reluctantly” but “the marketplace and the decline in physical book sales necessitates a reorganization.” The children’s sales group, however, will be “adding 3 additional heads” by the end of the year or early next year as it is “a growing part” […]