Independent non-profit publisher Dzanc Books is another player gearing up to publish a significant line of classic and backlist works in ebook form. Deal-watchers will have noticed that the publisher has been listing some of those acquisition recently in our deal reports, but publisher Dan Wickett says the scope of the project is far larger than the reports would indicate. Dzanc’s rEprint series has “well over a hundred titles contracted for and in-process” with deals in process for a hundred more, and a goal of reissuing more than 500 literary titles “over the course of the next year.” Originated by […]
Financing/Start-Ups
eNews: Anobii Prepares to Sell eBooks; Freethy Sells 1 Million Self-Published Books; and More
UK-based social book recommendation site Anobii announced that as part of their coming relaunch, they have reached agreements to sell ebooks from more than 10 publishers, including the UK divisions of Penguin, Random House, Harper Collins, Hachette, Bloomsbury, Harlequin and Wiley, along with Pan Macmillan, Faber & Faber and Canongate. Digital editions will be available for sale as of the end of October, with print books to follow at a later date. get them instantly on their free Anobii ebook apps. They will have Anobii iOS reading apps at launch, and plan to add Android apps “shortly.” Their cloud-based service […]
News Briefs
The Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency has acquired a number of authors for representation from Rosalie Siegel, International Agency, Inc., including the estate of William Wharton, Dennis Covington, Dana Johnson, Rev Jen and cookbook author Sudha Koul. Siegel is joining Lyons as a consultant, and has referred additional authors to the agency. Stephanie Madoff Mack’s memoir THE END OF NORMAL: A Wife’s Anguish, A Widow’s New Life, has been moved up to an October 20 pub date by Blue Rider Press (with Laurie Sandell’s Madoff book set for October 31 release). Associate publisher for Blue Rider Aileen Boyle tells us the […]
A Glimpse of Small Demons at FBF
While high-profile Bookish is still working on going live, smaller start-up online discovery tool SmallDemons.com is unveiling itself in a couple of presentations at the Frankfurt Book Fair, as the service moves into the invitation-only beta stage. They expect to open to the public in mid-December. Small Demons is a new way of indexing and organizing full-text content from books. Instead of showing text snippets, their combination of algorithms and human editors organizes book content around people, places and things mentioned in each book. So when you look up an individual title, you see all the actual people mentioned; a […]
Bookish CEO Departs Prior to Delayed Launch
Founding ceo of Bookish.com Paulo Lemgruber is leaving to “pursue other opportunities,” as the high-profile book-focused site is late in launching. Carolyn Marks is taking over as chief executive. In January she was named general manager of parents and lifestyle digital at Meredith, and she was general manager at The Daily Beast. In other personnel news, Stephanie Swane has been promoted to senior sales manager at becker&mayer! Books, driving the sales strategy for both the juvenile and adult packaging groups. She will focus on selling book proposals to US trade publishers and retailers, while developing new ideas for titles and […]
Bloomsbury Readies Digital Distribution Service
As Perseus expands their digital distribution to agents and authors, Bloomsbury is preparing a direct competitor to Constellation, Faber Factory and other ebook distribution platforms for publishers. Launching soon, the new service, called Bloomsbury Connect, has been in development for months under the direction of managing director, group sales and marketing Evan Schnittman. It’s a companion to the Bloomsbury Reader program, announced in April, which launched last week with almost 600 titles. As Schnittman explains, Bloomsbury Connect is a “service solution,” focused on publishers, while Bloomsbury Reader is a full “publishing solution” for out-of-print titles, focused on agencies and estates. Bloomsbury Connect […]