At Ten Speed Press, Lisa Westmoreland has been promoted to senior editor. Jeff Olson has been promoted to executive editor, Business at Apress, a division of Springer Science+Business Media. Marc Visnick has joined Callisto Media as director of sales. He was most recently director of sales, North America for Lonely Planet. Claire Kelley has joined Melville House Books as director, academic and library marketing. She was most recently marketing manager at Free Press. In addition, Dustin Kurtz has been named marketing manager, responsible for the company’s bookseller outreach programs and marketing for its series publications. Previously he was a buyer […]
Direct publishing
eNews: Smashwords Projects Gross Sales of $12M This Year; Faber Condenses Book Extracts into “Faber Forty-Fives”; and More
Smashwords ceo Mark Coker told Forbes that the company expects to double their gross revenues in 2012, to $12 million. They keep roughly 15 percent of that gross, and the company expects pre-tax profit “approaching $1 million.” Coker indicates that romance novels and erotica comprise nearly 40 percent of sales. This week Faber & Faber launched a six-title series, Faber Forty-Fives, of ebook-only extracts priced at £1.99 taken from books on the publisher’s Pop list by Simon Reynolds, Rob Chapman, Nick Kent, and others. Editor Dave Watkins said on Faber’s blog the publisher had been “toying with the idea for a […]
Some IPG Publishers Go DRM-Free
When IPG-distributed ebooks were inactive at Amazon.com for three months as the two companies renegotiated selling terms, some observers suggested that IPG clients would be in stronger position if their titles were available DRM-free–and could be read on Kindle devices even without being sold in the Kindle store. Tuesday the distributor announced that Chicago Review Press (owned by the same parent company) as well as clients ECW Press, Medallion Press and Triumph Books are removing DRM and selling their 1,100 or so ebooks without it. IPG says they are now offering all clients the option to sell their ebooks without DRM. […]
Kobo Formally Announces Self-Publishing Portal “Writing Life”
As promised over the past six months or so, Kobo has finally entered the self-publishing realm with Writing Life, which the company formally announced Tuesday morning. As with similar direct-publishing programs offered by other ebookstore platforms, Writing Life will be free to use, and Kobo claims the service will offer “10 percent higher royalties on sales in many growing international markets and allows authors much more freedom on pricing.” They also will allow authors to give their ebooks away for free “at any time without restrictive exclusive agreements,” and they make clear on their site that they do not seek […]
Pottermore Sells More Direct; Admits Amazon “Got It” Without Any Special Negotiation
Pottermore head Charlie Redmayne offered a couple of new tidbits in an interview with Laura Hazard Owen at Wednesday’s Paid Content conference. He said that “over 50 percent of the sales” of Harry Potter ebooks so far “are coming direct” through the Pottermore site. Redmayne had originally “estimated that a high percentage of the sales would come from” the ebookstores they partnered with. (He didn’t specify whether he meant all ebook sales, or just the English-language edition.) Also, confirming the line of reasoning we have taken from the start–and in contrast to some trade accounts that have tried to depict […]
Corporate: Macmillan New Ventures Buys EBI; Gallimard Last and Only Bidder for Flammarion
The sale of French publisher Flammarion by RCS appears to be down to a single contender, Les Echos reported, after bidding partners Albin Michel and Chequers Capital dropped out when they refused to increase their offer. The lone publishing house still in contention to buy Flammarion is Gallimard, which reportedly is working to raise their original offer of approximately 200 million euros. The RCS board of directors, which waffled its way into the sale offer in the first place, has indicated it might cancel the sale if the offer is not improved sufficiently–which is about the only tool available to them […]