Following the surfacing of Brooke Warner’s HuffPo piece explaining Amazon’s recent initiative to let third parties win the buy box on books to those who were unaware, both the IPBA and the Authors Guild have posted on why this is bad. But the bigger and more important question for the industry is whether anything can be done about the situation. To review, the change is part of revised third-party seller rules Amazon first announced last November, for implementation as of March 1, 2017. They did say at that time, “Sellers will be able to compete for the Buy Box for Books […]
Bookstores
Briefs: Prizes for Johnson and Shepard, Tor Labs, Opening Magic, and More
The inaugural winner of the $50,000 Simpson Family Literary Prize — honoring “a writer who has earned a distinguished reputation and the approbation and gratitude of readers” — is T. Geronimo Johnson, “at the relatively middle stage of a burgeoning career.” Author most recently of The World to Come: Stories Jim Shepard won the 2016 Rea Award for the Short Story, cited for his “prodigious research” into history and science and “X-ray vision of the soul.” The National Book Foundation gave their Innovations In Reading prize to Barbershop Books, a community-based literacy program that creates child-friendly reading spaces in barbershops, founded in 2013 by Alvin […]
May Bookseller Picks
Amazon‘s spotlight pick for May is Patricia Lockwood’s memoir Priestdaddy and their featured debut is Benjamin Ludwig’s Ginny Moon, also excerpted in our Buzz Books 2017: Spring/Summer. The other picks feature: Apollo 8, by Jeffrey Kluger One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, Scaachi Koul Time’s a Thief, by B.G. Firmani Sycamore, by Bryn Chancellor American Kingpin, by Nick Bilton Trajectory, by Richard Russo The Jersey Brothers, by Sally Mott Freeman Broken River, J. Robert Lennon Barnes & Noble‘s top fiction for May recommends Russo’s book of stories as well, along with: Men without Women, by Haruki Murakami Against […]
Barnes & Noble Promotes Parneros to CEO
Barnes & Noble is promoting chief operating officer Demos Parneros to ceo, with Len Riggio remaining as chairman of the board. In their awkward way the company said as much in March, when Riggio didn’t have any good answers to the state of the ceo search — if there really was a search at all — but praised their “spectacular new chief operating officer” calling Parneros “certainly a top candidate for the ceo position.” Parneros was hired in November, shortly before the previous coo Jamie Carey left the company. In the press release, Riggio says, “It has become abundantly clear over the last five […]
People, Etc.
Sharon Kunz has joined Da Capo Press as senior publicist, focusing primarily on their Seal Press list and reporting to Lissa Warren. Previously, she was media engagement manager at Globe Pequot. She will be based in the Hachette Boston office. The American Library Association has promoted Mary Mackay to associate executive director for publishing, effective June 5th. She will lead ALA publishing and its Editions/Neal-Schuman, Booklist, American Libraries, eLearning Solutions, Digital Resources, and Graphics imprints. At Ingram Content Group, Nick Yates has been promoted to manager of operations analysis in Greater Nashville. Christy Johnson has joined as client relations manager for Ingram Academic Services in New York. Adaptations The long-gestating efforts to develop Robert Jordan’s Wheel […]
Briefs: Ferguson to Holiday House, Grisham on Tour, and More
Margaret Ferguson will join Holiday House Publishing in May as publisher of a Margaret Ferguson Books imprint, reporting to editor-in-chief Mary Cash. It’s the first time Holiday House has created an eponymous imprint. Ferguson was publisher of a Margaret Ferguson Books at Farrar, Straus Children’s. Ferguson says in the announcement, “This is a wonderful and unique opportunity for me to be involved with a small publishing house that is on the move and expanding their publishing program in interesting ways.” Chris Kepner has launched The Kepner Agency, after nine years with Victoria Sanders & Associates as an agent and director of international […]