Penguin Australia marketing and publicity director Dan Ruffino is being promoted to group digital director for Penguin Group worldwide, starting September 1 based in New York. He will report to chairman and ceo John Makinson and “focus on digital publishing and new digital revenue opportunities; direct to consumer communication and business intelligence; and global partnerships.” Makinson comments: “He is a hugely talented marketing professional who has spent the last six years thinking about ways to make our content more enticing to the consumer. He has all the right qualifications and qualities for the job, but, above all, he has the […]
Bookstores
Bookselling: Titles that Sell Themselves
Daniel Goldin at Boswell and Books blogs about some indie bestsellers “that sell themselves.” He’s talking about “books that people are naturally drawn to” and if you “put a pile…on your paperback table, it will sell.” For his store, that roster includes MURDER ON THE EIFFEL TOWER by Claude Izner; THE POWER OF KINDNESS by Piero Ferrucci; Joseph Caldwell’s THE PIG DID IT (and now THE PIG COMES TO DINNER); and another “inadvertent sleeper” he just discovered–CHICKS DIG TIME LORDS: A Celebration of Dr. Who by the Women Who Love It.Post
Bookselling: A New Store, Australia is IndieBound, and Staff Picks Press
Spokane, WA-based Auntie’s Bookstore is opening a new branch on the second floor of the River Park Square mall.Local story Following an agreement with UK booksellers, the ABA has now licensed elements of the IndieBound marketing umbrella to the Australian Booksellers Association, which will launch the program in July. Albany, NY bookseller Susan Novotny, who owns The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza and Market Block Books, is using the POD technology at Troy Book Makers (which she co-owns) to launch a publishing imprint. It’s called Staff Press Picks. She tells the Times Union, “Our staff still reads books and they […]
People
At Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children’s, Jenny Groves and Jenn Taber have been promoted to publicity manager, and Jean Thrift has been promoted to marketing associate. Cambridge University Press has hired Peter Phillips as chief operating officer, joining the publisher in early October, the Bookseller reports. He will join the board of the press as well. He was at the UK’s Office of Communications (an independent regulator and competition authority in the communications industries.) A group of people with connections to trade publishing, including agent Rafe Sagalyn, author and editor of the New Republic Franklin Foer and others have held informal […]
More Announcements: Hearst Renews, Indigo's Teen Awards
Hearst Magazines has renewed its long-term trademark licensing agreement with Sterling that grants them the rights to create and publish books under the Hearst Books imprint. Sterling has worked with Hearst for nine years. Indigo is running a new Teen Read Awards program in which teen readers can vote for favorite books, authors and characters in ten nominated categories. As the chain underscores in their announcement, “the teen books category has grown by 150% and has become the second largest at Indigo and Chapters, after adult fiction.”Release
Amazon Cuts Kindle Price, New iOS Releases, and More
Hours after Barnes & Noble’s price cut on Nook and announcement of a new lower-priced wi-fi model, Amazon announced a price reduction of its own. They lowered the price on the regular model of Kindle from $269 to $189, effective immediately. The press loves “price wars” and of course everyone is an expert on what this means, and what it portends. Barnes & Noble is particularly vocal in media accounts. CEO William Lynch tells the NYT, “I don’t see more than two, or maybe three dedicated reading companies in the market for selling e-books. I think you are starting to […]