As of Thursday morning, the Harry Potter ebooks and digital audio recordings are available to libraries through OverDrive, as previously promised. Participating libraries can be found via www.overdrive.com/harrypotter. OverDrive is providing EPUB files, and library patrons can borrow Kindle-format files in the US. OverDrive had been taking pre-orders from libraries for what was said to be an April launch, and then mysteriously “temporarily suspended pre-sales and display” through library catalogs on March 20.
eNews
AAP Launches Expanded Stats As Trade Reports A Good January
The AAP released sales numbers for January 2012, launching a significantly revised and expanded data set under the new name StatShot. The new counts reflect data from 1,149 publishers overall across all the sectors the AAP tracks, and provide a variety of more granular data breakouts. Trade statistics are enhanced by the inclusion of data from multiple major distributors, including all of Perseus’s distribution lines, IPG (which accounts for 663 publishers), and clients distributed by Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette Book Group. (Previously only 20 to 25 publishers contributed to most of the trade statistical pool.) The University […]
Harry Potter eBooks Finally For Sale, With Major Retailers – Including Amazon – Acting As Third Party Services Distributors
After many delays and unexpected hiccups, digital editions of JK Rowling’s entire Harry Potter series are available for sale from Pottermore. The first three books in the series are priced at $7.99 (£4.99 in the UK) and the final four books are $9.99 (or £6.99.) Digital audiobooks are also available, narrated by Stephen Fry (in the UK) and Jim Dale (in the US), priced at $29.99 (or £17.99) for the first three and £17.99 (or £32.99). The ebook editions are available in ePub format to load on a wide range of compatible devices, and so far Pottermore has partnered with […]
People, Etc.
Kate Lee will leave ICM on April 30 after nearly ten years with the agency. She is also stepping back from book agenting to pursue new opportunities; her clients, who include Jeff Jarvis, Brian Stelter, Charles Finch, and Adam Penenberg, will remain with ICM. Perseus has finally announced, after we reported it in early February, that Writers House has signed on with its Argo Navis author services program, which the agency will offer to its authors looking to distribute their works digitally. “After reviewing many of the digital publishing options available, we concluded that the service provided by Argo Navis […]
Briefs: Early Vonnegut Novella Published as Kindle Single; Patient Says Doctor Violated Her Privacy in 2009 Book
A previously unpublished novella by Kurt Vonnegut, BASIC TRAINING, is available today from RosettaBooks as a Kindle Single for $1.99. The 22,000-word autobiographical novella, “satirizing the military, authoritarianism, and most of the assumed mid-century myths of the family” was originally written in the late 1940s and meant to be published under the pseudonym “Mark Harvey.” In a complaint filed in Rhode Island federal court on March 16 and obtained by Courthouse News, Gabrielle Lisnoff claimed that Dr. Michael Stein, who treated her for drug addiction between 2005 and 2010, violated her privacy by using “her most private, embarrassing, and traumatizing […]
People, Etc.
Marysue Rucci will return to Simon & Schuster as vp, editor-in-chief on April 2. She was most recently editorial director at Putnam and originally worked at S&S from 1997 through 2010. “Marysue will be the leader and architect of Simon & Schuster’s fiction list,” said publisher Jonathan Karp in a statement. “She will supervise all our fiction acquisitions, build her own list of authors–both novelists and nonfiction writers–and provide counsel to our editors. Under her guidance we expect to be an industry leader, publishing novels of the highest quality and the greatest appeal. We are all delighted that Marysue is […]