The National Book Awards turned into a celebration of independence of sorts on Wednesday night, with independent publishers issuing three of the four medal winners, and a special award for service to the American literary community going to independent bookseller and former ABA president Mitchell Kaplan from Miami’s Books & Books. In a similar but different vein, the AP called the evening’s festivities “a gilded tribute to the 99 percent. Stories of resilience in the face of poverty, displacement and disappearance were awarded Wednesday night as hundreds of writers, editors, publishers and other industry officials gathered under the 70-foot ceilings of […]
Book Country Launches Self-Publishing Platform
Penguin’s online genre community Book Country will launch an array of tools for authors to self-publish their work beginning on Wednesday, debuting in tandem with a redesign of their website. Book Country is offering three publishing packages to authors who wish to self-publish within the genres of romance, mystery/thriller, and science fiction & fantasy: a digital book with user-formatting based on a Microsoft Word file for $99, a package that adds POD printed books for $299, and a “professional” package for which Book Country creates “polished print and ePub files” from among “six different elegant interior styles,” for $549. (Book Country […]
Borders Creditors Will Get Only 4 to 10 Cents On the Dollar
Borders’ current plan for Chapter 11 liquidation proceedings got a preliminary go-ahead in federal bankruptcy court Monday afternoon, when Judge Martin Glenn signed off on the company’s explanatory disclosure statement of their liquidation program. Borders currently expects to pay unsecured creditors somewhere between 4 and 10 percent of the $812 million to $850 million they are owed. Among other items gleaned from the documents: at some point “during the course of these cases,” Perseus resigned from the creditors committee (as did Sony Music). Borders continues to insist that they “intend to market [their] Kobo stock for sale.” They hold roughly 9.9 percent […]
People, Awards, Etc.
Molly Barton will move up to global digital director at Penguin as of December 1. She takes over from Dan Ruffino, who is returning home to Australia. At HarperCollins, Beth Silfin has been promoted to the newly created position of vp, deputy general counsel, responsible for overseeing the contracts department in working directly with literary agents on contracts and rights negotiations. As a result of the change in how the legal and contracts department is organized, vp, associate general counsel Tom Ward will leave the company after more than 15 years. In addition, Cindy DiTiberio has been promoted to senior […]
Authors Guild Says Kindle Lending Library Is “Outside the Bounds of the Publisher’s Authority”
In a strongly worded memo issued Monday afternoon, the Authors Guild took issue with Amazon’s Kindle Lending Library for Prime customers, in particular those titles available without express permission from publishers and authors. “How can Amazon get away with this? By giving its boilerplate contract with these publishers a tortured reading,” the Guild said, adding that permission appeared to be dispensed with “because, as Amazon apparently sees it, its contracts with these publishers merely require it to pay publishers the wholesale price of the books that Amazon Prime customers download.” The reasoning is “nonsense”, from the AG’s understanding of Amazon’s […]
Bookselling: Outwrite Bookstore Needs New Location; Parnassus Books Will Open November 19; and More
Outwrite Bookstore and Coffeehouse in Atlanta said the store may have to close after more than 18 years in business unless it can find a new location within the next few months. “Our lease is expiring in a few months and there really is no way that any model we have looked at will allow us to continue in this space,” owner Philip Rafshoon told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “For 15 years we have been a part of helping the neighborhood grow around us and hopefully we will find a location where we can do the same for another community or […]