The NOOK Media ebooks team announced a number of recent promotions. Ali Kokmen has been promoted to director of sales, ebooks, reporting to Kashif Zafar, responsible for fiction, nonfiction, and kids and teens. Norman Waters has been promoted to senior merchandising associate, continuing to report to Kokmen. Finally, Matt Warner has transitioned his role to be director, ebook channel sales & marketing, also continuing to report to Zafar. In the UK, founder and managing director of Quadrille Alison Cathie will leave the company at the end of August. Cathie, who founded the craft and cookery publisher in 1994, will now […]
Bookstores
Scribd Enters Digital Book Discovery Fray; Same-Day Service from BN & Google
Scribd relaunched what it dubs its “new browse experience”, the company’s try at digital book discovery to complement its existing subscription program, which now boasts 500,000 titles (with Princeton University Press, Samhain, and National Geographic among the most recently added publishers.) The browsing capability is available at Scribd’s website and in the coming weeks through its various mobile apps. Scribd vp, marketing Julie Haddon told us in an interview earlier this week that the company enlisted a “50-person team of scientists, book publishing experts, librarians, and marketers”, as well as a small editorial staff, to “work out the ideal browsing […]
Bookselling: Employees Buy Women & Children First, Hastings Sale Finalized
Chicago’s Women & Children First Bookstore has been sold to two employees, Lynn Mooney and Sarah Hollenbeck, the Windy City Times reported. Their winning bid was one of “eight formal offers” made to owners and founders Linda Bubon and Ann Christophersen. Separately, as expected, the sale of Hastings to a company controlled by Joel Weinshanker was formally approved by shareholders on Tuesday. Weinshanker says in the release, “It’s an honor and a privilege to be able to be part of the next chapter of such an important American retailer as Hastings. We will continue to run the business with the same […]
Bookselling: Diesel Malibu to Close, Munro’s Handed to Employees
Diesel will close its Malibu bookstore sometime this summer, and has marked down inventory. Owner John Evans indicated to the Malibu Times earlier this month, “Their lease runs through January 2015 but Evans said part of the reason they’re closing early is because they won’t be able to afford six more months of payments. Evans also faulted Diesel’s location in the Country Mart for the store’s impending closure. Housed in a first-floor space near a courtyard and fountain on the northern side of the center, Evans said it was often hard to draw in foot traffic.” In Victoria, British Columbia, 84-year-old Jim Munro […]
People: Nadine Gordimer Dies
Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, 90, died at home in Johannesburg. Gordimer won the Booker in 1974 and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 2002, along with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991. Jamil Ahmad, 83, author of THE WANDERING FALCON, died at his home in Islamabad after a long illness. Ahmad’s debut novel was published in 2011 when he was 79 after being excerpted in the “Pakistan” issue of Granta. At St Martin’s, Nancy Trypuc has been promoted to vp, creative services. Jerry Bilek will join the Minnesota Historical Society Press as sales manager on August 1. Bilek is the owner of Monkey […]
More Amazon: The FAA (Drones) and the FTC (Lawsuit)
The week finishes with still more Amazon news. The company is sincere about wanting to use drones to make deliveries. After the FAA made it clear in late June that they are still prohibiting commercial uses of drones, Amazon formally applied for an exemption from that regulation. News of that application has sent their stock up over 4 percent in Friday morning trading (almost $15 a share). In the letter, Amazon says: “We are rapidly experimenting and iterating on Prime Air inside our next generation research and development lab in Seattle. In the past five months, we have made advancements […]