The AAP reported sales for December, with net trade shipments of $493 million down 3.5 percent from a year ago. Children’s/YA hardcover was the only print growth category for the month, up 12.3 percent, and per the year’s trend, mass market books declined the most, down 40 percent. eBook sales remained moderate, at $85 million the third-largest category after adult hardcover and adult paperback. Comprising 17.2 percent of overall trade sales, they did climb from $77.3 million in November though on a comparable basis, ebooks less than doubled compared to the same period a year ago (when they were $49.4 […]
eNews
For Tucker Max, Self-Publishing Ensues
New on the bestseller lists this month is Tucker Max’s third–and according to the author final–book of “fratire,” HILARITY ENSUES. Overlooked so far is that with this new volume Max joins the ranks of successful authors to turn to self-publishing, issuing the book through his own company Blue Heeler Books. (A blue heeler is a type of dog, which Max owns.) Max’s agent Byrd Leavell helped shop the distribution rights, in which Simon & Schuster prevailed over one other contender as the author’s distribution partner, after the author “turned down a huge offer” from another big six house for a […]
Figment To Acquire Teen Writing Site Inkpop From HarperCollins; OverDrive Will Distribute Harry Potter eBooks to Schools and Libraries
HarperCollins is selling off teen writing website Inkpop, which it created in 2009, to Figment for an undisclosed sum. The move, the WSJ reports, reflects HarperCollins’ conclusion that “the benefits of marketing its titles to a significantly larger combined audience outweigh the advantages of controlling its own teen writing website.” In three years of operation Inkpop built up a base of approximately 95,000 users, while Figment has more than 115,000 teens using its site, with “non-existent overlap” between the two groups, according to Figment co-founder Jacob Lewis. Figment will assume control of inkpop’s operations, activity, and website as of March […]
A Little More On IPG and Amazon
The story of Amazon removing IPG clients’ ebooks from sale spread quickly yesterday. Among additional details, IPG president Mark Suchomel told Crain’s Chicago and the WSJ that ebooks comprise less than 10 percent of the distributor’s revenues. And he told the Chicago Tribune “that the e-books sold through Amazon’s Kindle tablet account for about 5 percent of the company’s business.” (Their lists are not particularly deep in leading ebook categories like popular fiction and romance.) According to IPG’s website, they had 4,444 titles available in Kindle format. Their EPUB title count is about 500 titles lower, hence Suchomel’s exhortation to […]
Amazon Removes Kindle Versions of IPG Books After Distributor Declines to Change Selling Terms
President of the second-largest independent book distributor Independent Publishers Group (IPG) Mark Suchomel said in an e-mail alert yesterday, “I am disappointed to report that Amazon.com has failed to renew its agreement with IPG to sell Kindle titles.” As of yesterday, Suchomel says, Amazon has taken down all IPG ebooks from its site, though they continue to sell print books from the distributor’s clients. (Our own check confirms that Kindle editions are missing for IPG titles, complete with the standard box to “tell the publisher!” you would like to read this book on Kindle. Individual Kindle hyperlinks now result in […]
Nook Tablet 8GB Announced for $199
Alongside their third quarter earnings, Barnes & Noble announced the release of a new Nook Tablet priced at $199–the same as the Kindle Fire–with 8GB of memory. (The original Nook Tablet, still available at $249, has 16GB of memory.) Along with the new model, they have reduced the price on the existing Nook Color to $169. Release