As the textbook market continues to shrink, industry leader Pearson is playing their final card in trying to get budget-savvy college students to fall in line, and as usual pretending it is corporate innovation. They are transitioning away from the printed textbook entirely, hoping to strangle the secondary market for used (and imported) textbooks once and for all. Pearson will no longer update their 1500 active US textbooks every three years with new editions. In 2020 they will update just 100 titles (versus the 500 titles updated in 2019). They say their textbooks will be “digital first” going forward, with […]
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Jennifer Weis will join the Ross Yoon Agency as senior literary agent based in New York, representing book club and women’s fiction, thrillers, memoir, narrative and platform-driven nonfiction, psychology and health. She was previously executive editor at St. Martin’s. At Princeton University Press, Fred Appel is promoted to publisher, religion and anthropology; Ben Tate to senior editor, humanities; Susannah Shoemaker to editor, mathematics and engineering; Matt Rohal to associate editor; and Charlie Allen and Jacqueline Delaney to editorial associate. Alloy Entertainment editor Hayley Wagreich is joining Serial Box as head of content, reporting to ceo Molly Barton and president Julian […]
Briefs: Germany’s KNV Sold, Scribd Minis, Rebel Girls Imprint, PRH UK Pulls Book
Bankrupt German book wholesaler KNV (Koch, Neff and Volckmar) was auctioned by the trustee to Berlin-based privately owned logistics company Zeitfracht. The sale price was not disclosed, but the creditors’ committees have approved the purchase agreement. Zeitfracht says it will retain all employees — approximately 1,600 jobs — and continue to operate KNV’s three locations. Press release Subscription service Scribd is formally rolling out Snapshots (which launched in beta in February), “designed to offer key insights of a book in about 15 minutes to spark subscribers’ interest in reading the book in its entirety.” It’s “the literary equivalent of a […]
Hachette Book Group, IPG Add Distribution Programs for Indies; Pottermore Moves to New Warner JV, and More
The steady stream continues of publishers offering programs to encourage independent booksellers to order directly, following Baker & Taylor‘s announcement on May 1 that they will withdraw from trade wholesaling. The latest announcements are from Hachette Book Group and Independent Publishers Group. Under the HBG plan, any independent bookstore who does not already have an HBG account can participate, with August 30 as the deadline for the first order. Benefits include: expedited account set-up; no minimum quantity on the bookstore’s initial order; expedited credit approval; additional discounts; and more. HBG evp group sales director Alison Lazarus said in the release, […]
Wiley to Buy Knewton
Just days after the Cengage and McGraw-Hill merger announcement, Wiley announced a deal to buy the assets of ed-tech firm Knewton, in a transaction expected to close by the end of the month. The price was not disclosed — though Knewton was reportedly being offered at a “fire sale” price, with EdSurge saying, “There were other buyers bidding for Knewton’s assets, with the transaction prices discussed in the $10 million range.” One of the first big ed-tech companies, New York-based Knewton had raised over $180 in funding. “No industry analyst we spoke with believes the sale price was anywhere near […]
Kobo CEO Tamblyn’s Tips for Raising eBook Revenues
It’s only appropriate that a Book Industry Study Group (BISG) annual meeting Friday that opened with predictions of continuing tight markets for book paper and manufacturing concluded with Kobo (“often thought of as ‘Kobo-Who-We-Wish-Were-Bigger-In-the-US'”) ceo Michael Tamblyn running down six ways to sell more digital product — and retain readers’ attention — with better metadata. His biggest and most important suggestion/ask — which has been a staple of some of my own speeches for years — was, “Add series data. Every damn time.” As Tamblyn noted, series represent a whopping 52 percent of their ebook sales. Yet it is “one […]