Inside of some long and boosterish year-end blog posts, Smashwords made a couple of announcements. The privately-owned ebook distributor “will do around $15 million in ebook sales in 2012.” In June 2012, founder Mark Coker had told Forbes he expected to double his 2011 gross to $12 million for the year. Since romance and erotica comprised almost 40 percent of sales in June, we infer that growth in those categories helped lift overall results. It’s also increasingly clear that Smashwords’ growth is linked to the international expansion of the iBookstore. “For the month of November 2012, sales of Smashwords-distributed titles […]
Direct publishing
Byliner Adds Print; Firebrand Offers Book Widget
Publisher of digital shorts Byliner has paired with Ingram to bring some of their titles into print–and bookstores–starting next month. Byliner founder and ceo John Tayman says in the announcement “we increasingly hear from our readers and writers that they would like our stories available in print as well as digital form.” Ingram will handling printing and distribution, and their Graphic Arts Books unit will also supply Byliner with “the back-office services of a traditional publisher for distribution, administration, file management, and other services.” Byliner’s first “original,” Three Cups of Deceit by Jon Krakauer, was published in trade paperback by […]
eNews: Google Books in Russia; eBooks From Time Inc. and USA Today
Google has launched its Google Play store in Russia, which will sell ebooks starting from 49 rubles ($1.59) to customers with an existing Google Wallet account. Time Inc. and USA Today are the latest magazine and newspaper publications, respectively, moving into the ebook market. Time Inc.’s MyRecipes.com is launching a new digital cookbook series with recipes taken from the company’s lifestyle publications Real Simple, Food & Wine, Cooking Light, Southern Living, Sunset, All You and Coastal Living. The first of the digital cookbooks, all priced at $3.99, is “MyRecipes Best-Loved Cookies for Every Occasion.” Meanwhile, USA Today’s first ebook, also released today, is USA TOMORROW, a […]
People, Etc.
Benjamin Lee will join the Atria Publishing Group as associate publisher on January 2. He moves over from Simon & Schuster, where he was most recently director, sales, retail and marketing, overseeing Target, Readerlink, Baker & Taylor, Ingram, Kobo, Google, various other digital aggregators and the Christian retail market including Family Christian, Lifeway and Mardel. Elizabeth Psaltis will join the Gallery Books Group in the newly created role of marketing director, reporting to Louise Burke. Psaltis, who was previously advertising and promotion director for Berkley, NAL, Riverhead Trade, Perigee, and Penguin Press, will be responsible for marketing efforts for Gallery, Threshold, […]
Amazon Contest Drops Penguin, Boosts Top Prize; Curtis Brown UK to Launch Hundreds of Titles As KDP Exclusives
Amazon’s “breakthrough novel” contest returns for the sixth year, this time dropping the unlikely partnership with Penguin Group for a “new publisher”: “Amazon Publishing is the official publishing sponsor for 2013 — which means a faster publishing timeline, higher royalties, ability to launch the books in multiple formats (print, audio, ebook) and worldwide distribution.” The grand prize advance has been raised to $50,000. Given all the success that Amazon’s self-publishing programs and house imprints have brought to some authors, it’s surprising that the contest winners have such a consistently modest track record. (The fiction winners have been The Beautiful Land […]
Unlocking More Titles for Digital
The theme of today’s enews reports is clear: a variety of initiatives to get more material into digital form in a variety of ways: Two multi-volume deals with Audible were announced yesterday. Digital publisher Diversion Books will see “the majority” of their backlist and new titles going forward turned into audiobooks, available on Audible starting this winter. Diversion says they are publishing 100 titles a year. Separately, Audible is also working with UK literary agency AP Watt to produce audiobook versions of the backlists of seven well-known authors: Somerset Maugham, Nevil Shute, Robert Graves, Rafael Sabatini, P M Hubbard, Ronald […]