The Federal Trade Commission has settled with W3 Innovations, which owns children’s app developer Broken Thumbs, for $50,000, after the developer was charged with violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by collecting information from children under the age of 13 without their parents’ permission. (Several apps produced by Broken Thumbs were downloaded more than 50,000 times.) FTC chairman Jon Liebovitz said in a statement: “The F.T.C.’s COPPA Rule requires parental notice and consent before collecting children’s personal information online, whether through a Web site or a mobile app. Companies must give parents the opportunity to make smart choices when […]
Quarto Buys Frances Lincoln For £4.5m, Reports Sales and Profit Increase So Far This Year
Quarto announced Tuesday that it had acquired Frances Lincoln Ltd for £4.5m. Quarto chairman Laurence Orbach said in a statement that Frances Lincoln’s non-fiction and illustrated children’s book list “complements Quarto’s existing UK publishing business, several imprints trading under the Aurum name, and more than doubles the scale of our presence in the UK. The acquisition is in keeping with our strategy to further expand our already broad offering of niche content.” For the fiscal year ending March 31, Frances Lincoln reported an audited profit before tax of £619,000, net assets of £3.8 million and gross assets of £5.9 million. […]
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At Bloomsbury UK, Charlotte Atyeo has been named publisher of sport and Wisden, while Charlotte Croft moves up to publisher of the sports and fitness department at A&C Black. Paula Schlosser has joined Martingale & Company as design director. Previously she was an art director at Oxford University Press.
Filing Shows HarperCollins Sales Fell in Fiscal 2011
News Corp’s annual report provided a few more nonspecific clues about HarperCollins’ performance in the 2011 fiscal year, following on last week’s release highlighting the strength of its children’s book division and how ebooks accounted for approximately 12 percent of total sales. A 10-K filing released Monday showed that HarperCollins sales fell from the previous fiscal year (when the division’s earnings increased by approximately $128 million, or 11 percent, on fiscal 2009) due to lower book sales due to fewer new releases and lower licensing fees resulting from a settlement received at HarperCollins in fiscal 2010.” HarperCollins also had 166 […]
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Rachel Mannheimer has been promoted to associate editor at Bloomsbury USA. Michael Bowles will join Random House Canada as director, eBooks and eProduct development on August 29. Previously he was a content development manager at Kobo. Anne Born, translator of more than 50 Scandinavian novels and poetry collections, died on July 27 in Devon at age 87. Among the authors she translated were Carsten Jensen, Isak Dinesen and Per Petterson, including his IMPAC-Award winning novel OUT STEALING HORSES. Guardian obit
eNews: IndieBound Partners With BlueFire on eReading Software; Amazon Cracks Down On PLR eBooks; and More
The ABA announced last week that it is working with BlueFire to create a version of the company’s Reader app, which will be called the IndieBound Reader, for IndieCommerce stores selling Google eBooks. The app is scheduled to launch in the next 60 days. The Android version of the app will link back to indie bookstores, while the iOS version will not because of Apple’s rules about in-app purchases and links to outbound e-commerce stores. Users will be able to buy books using their Google ID instead of having to active an account with Adobe Digital Editions (as is the […]