UK-based audiobook publisher AudioGo has suspended operations and is looking for an investment or outright sale, the company’s head of sales and marketing Rachel Josephson confirmed to the the Bookseller. She added: “There is a considerable amount of interest in AudioGO and we are hopeful of achieving a swift resolution. Protecting and respecting the rights of everyone that we work with is uppermost in our considerations and we are grateful for the fantastic support we have received from our colleagues throughout the industry.” The company recently sold its US-based arm Blackstone Audio back to its founders, just ten months after […]
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Sarah Harrison Smith has been named children’s editor at the New York Times Book Review. She was most recently on the paper’s metropolitan desk. Scholastic unveiled the new cover designed by Kazu Kubuishi for HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS, which will be published on August 27 (along with the other redesigned books in the series) at BEA Thursday morning. At the Audiobook Publishers Association’s Audie Awards ceremony last night at the New-York Historical Society, Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair (read by Colin Firth, Audible) was named named Audiobook of the Year and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (multi-voiced […]
Briefs: A Cover of Inferno; Audible Updates iOS Apps; Anthology to Close
Doubleday unveiled the cover of Dan Brown‘s May 14 release Inferno on the Today Show this morning. ‘”Inferno takes place in Italy and was inspired by Dante’s iconic 14th century poem of the same name. The cover features a portrait of Dante against the city of Florence, as well as Dante’s famous nine rings of hell.” Apparently Audible has not had a dedicated app for Apple’s iPad line, even though “more than 20 percent of Audible customers already use Audible’s iPhone app on the iPad. They have addressed that with the release of a new app optimized for iPads, and […]
Bresnick To Take Over for Weil; Blackstone Sold to AudioGO
Paul Bresnick of the Paul Bresnick Agency has a deal in principle to assume control of the Wendy Weil Agency on behalf of the late agent’s estate, he wrote to clients, “to ensure that Wendy’s clients will continue to be represented with the highest professional standards for which the agency has earned its sterling reputation.” Bresnick has started informing authors while the details are finalized “so that there will be no break in the service you’ve come to expect from the agency and your best interests will continue to be protected,” he wrote in a letter shown to us. He […]
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Kevin Doughten will join Crown as senior editor on September 24, focusing on non-fiction. He was most recently an editor at Viking. Olga Rogozina has joined the Van Lear Agency in Moscow as both a literary agent and contracts manager. Previously she was foreign rights manager at Astrel. Founder of Chicago’s 10-store Beck’s Bookstores, Bob Beck, 91, died last week at Northwestern Hospital. “Today, a marketing major would say he had a business plan. Back then, it was called an angle. He sold books at Beck’s for less than the college bookstores charged, and he paid more when the used […]
More from Amazon: Merging the Digital/Audio Reading Experience, Kindle Serials
Amazon’s new device launch on Wednesday garnered the most media attention, but the company also introduced some intriguing new features that merge or break apart reading experiences — while potentially raising rights-related questions. People have long speculated that it would be great to “sync” ebooks and digital audio recordings so you can go back and forth between reading and listening without losing your place, and Amazon has built that with what they call Whispersync for Voice. It offers what they call a “continuous reading experience” between digital and audio editions, in which a customer can start reading one edition and continue in […]