Books-A-Million has hired James Phelps as vp of eCommerce, responsible for “executing the vision, branding, merchandising and marketing strategy for Booksamillion.com.” Phelps has worked for retailers including HSN, Kohl’s, and Brookstone. At Red Wheel/Weiser Books and Conari Press, Kim Ehart has been promoted to assistant editor, while Michael Alexander has been promoted to production editor. Our Deal reports show the first reports from agent Anna Ghosh under her independent agency Ghosh Literary in San Francisco, though she set up the agency last year. That leaves Russell Galen as the sole principal at Scovil Galen Ghosh. In first-week sales reports, CNN laments Congressman Paul Ryan‘s […]
Bestseller Radar
Closing the Book On Kindle Unlimited Bestsellers
As we have demonstrated pretty definitively over the past two weeks, the introduction of Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited subscription service has shown their hourly Kindle “best seller” list — and therefore the entire “sales rank” system — to be a fiction of merchandising rather than a ranking of titles by actual, paid individual unit sales. Not only are subscription “reads” counted towards the sales and best seller rank, but now that participants have seen the effect on their own sales, it’s clear that even subscription “checkouts” are counted. (So as soon as a KU member downloads a title, that counts towards […]
People, Etc.
Kerry Eltman has joined Fox Chapel Publishing as chief financial officer. Previously he was controller at The Jay Group, a logistics and supply chain company. John Aardema has joined Sourcebooks in the newly created position of art director in the entertainment & gift group. He spent the past nine years as a freelance art director. William LoTurco has joined Kuhn Projects as an associate agent. Previously, he was at Vigliano Associates and WME. The Romance Writers of America announced its Golden Heart and RITA Award winners at its annual conference in San Antonio, TX last Friday. As of Monday morning, […]
People, Etc.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has hired Bridgett Paradise as svp of human resources and chief people officer, reporting directly to CEO Linda Zecher. Her role “will encompass human resources strategy and policy, including talent management and acquisition, organizational design and employee benefits. Paradise has been at Microsoft, most recently in the position of general manager, human resources for the worldwide services division. Abigail Naqvi has joined Bloomsbury as the new head of academic marketing for the Americas. Previously she was marketing manager at Palgrave Macmillan. At HarperCollins, Susan Yeager has been promoted to director of sales, mass merch. At Knopf Children’s, Allison Wortche has been promoted to […]
Batman Beats Back Kindle Unlimited
Yes, you read that correctly. For the first day since we starting monitoring the effect on Kindle Unlimited titles on Amazon Kindle’s So-Called Bestseller List, the number of KU titles on the top 100 declined modestly, now accounting for 38 titles. But Batman related books have stormed the list, taking over 10 slots, including the No. 1 position. (Wednesday was celebrated as the 75th anniversary of Batman’s creation.) KU books still claim half of the top 50 titles, though (25 today, versus 24 yesterday), and Amazon Publishing’s own titles still show the biggest boost. The traditional publisher titles included in KU […]
Daily Update: Influence of Kindle Unlimited on Amazon “Bestsellers” Grows
Since no one else is reporting on this at all, we’ll continue our tracking. Amazon’s hourly list of the top 100 “paid” Kindle bestsellers appears to be under the steadily growing influence of Kindle Unlimited “checkouts,” which are counted as part of paid sales. In this morning’s check, 45 of the top 100 titles are also available through Kindle Unlimited — and 24 of the top 50 titles. Amazon Publishing’s own titles still appear to be benefitting the most, and self-published authors who are not exclusive to Amazon (and therefore not part of KU) seem to have lost the most […]