Curtis Riskey has been appointed Executive Director for CBA, effective immediately, after serving in an interim position since November 2009. Previously he was the Association’s strategic solutions executive. ReleaseSimon Juden has left his post as Chief Executive of the Publishers Association for Pearson, where he will be Head of Public Affairs. The Bookseller Chronicle Books announced a slew of promotions across the company. Sarah Billingsley has been named Assistant Editor, Food & Drink, while on the Children’s side, Melissa Manlove has been promoted to Editor, Mary Colgan to Assistant Editor, Eloise Leigh to Designer, and Amy Achaibou to Senior Designer. […]
Pershing Square's Ackman on Borders: "We Don't See It As a Likely Bankruptcy."
As part of a segment on CNBC’s Fast Money Tuesday evening, Pershing Square CEO and founder Willam Ackman – Borders’ majority stakeholder and holder of a $42.5 million loan that will come due on April 1 – prognosticated on the retailer’s chances of survival: “I think [bankruptcy] is a low-probability event. The company’s made a lot of progress in last 12 months from operational and a financial point of view” and “really stabilized itself financially.” He later added: “The stock trades as if it’s going to go bankrupt at $1 a share…[but] we’re going to see more when company reports […]
ScrollMotion Signs on Textbook Publishers for iPad Deal
Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Kaplan and HMH are among several textbook publishers that have signed with Scrollmotion to adapt and develop textbooks as applications, test-prep and study guides for the iPad. Scrollmotion will take and adapt digital files provided by publishers for the iPad, and then add extra features, which the WSJ reports “include applications to let students play video, highlight text, record lectures, take printed notes, search the text, and participate in interactive quizzes to test how much they’ve learned and where they may need more work.” To date textbook adoption on e-readers has been slow (as Amazon could attest with […]
DBW: Looking for the E-Book's Tipping Point
The morning keynote panel discussion at Digital Book World’s second day tried to answer a whole lot of very important questions on the digital front, like what percentage of e-book sales will be the disruption point, the relationship between digital growth and print decline (if there even is such a relationship) the messy ramifications of territory, whether an agency model will stick, and, more practically, what is each panelist’s preferred mode of reading. Moderator and DBW founder Mike Shatzkin was not shy in peppering his panel of “four smart eloquent guys” with his queries, and on hand to field them […]
DBW: New Biz Models Changing the Commercial Rules of Publishing
During the final session of panels Tuesday, Don Linn assembled an eclectic mix of independent booksellers, digital publishers and entrepreneurs to delve into some of the new business models that may change publishing, once they are more well established. Because each presenter told their tales separately, so too will this report be separated out by individual: Chris Morrow of Northshire Books: “I’m here to remind you that physical bookstores still exist, and most of you still sell books through physical bookstores.” He went on to discuss why POD at the retail level is important (case in point: the store has […]
DBW: Back-Loaded Book Deals and Other Business Models
This afternoon’s panel discussion sounded an optimistic note (one attendee called it “the most hopeful panel he’d heard in the last 2 years”) for publishing’s ability to be nimble on non-traditional book deal models, and moderator Lorraine Shanley took her panelists – HarperStudio’s Bob Miller, Mary Ann Naples of Creative Culture, Ira Silverberg of Sterling Lord Literistic and Vanguard’s Roger Cooper — through a series of questions addressing profit-sharing, increased author marketing, and how to make publisher, author, and agent happy with so many possible models in play – or potentially in the works. Caveat: these notes were more or […]