Jonathan Lyons will join Folio Literary Management as executive director of subsidiary rights, and will also serve as the agency’s legal counsel on select issues, including contract, copyright, and estate law. He has been running his own agency and law practice. Molly Jaffa has been promoted to director of international rights, and will continue to develop her client list. Jennifer Doerr has joined Yale University Press as senior publicist. She previously held director of publicity positions at Macmillan Children’s and Skyhorse Publishing. At Random House Children’s, Chelsea Eberly was promoted to associate editor. In the UK, Bloomsbury is launching a new […]
eNews
eNews: Sesame Workshop eBooks From Random House; Piatkus’s Digital Romance Imprint; and More
Random House and Sesame Workshop launched a new digital publishing initiative this week with a number of ebooks focusing on early reading and readiness. Elmo Says Achoo! and Elmo’s Breakfast Bingo are the first titles on sale, with an additional 19 titles available this Spring. “With this program, Random House and Sesame Workshop are expanding our long-standing partnership of more than four decades and extending our shared commitment to children’s literacy and enriching children’s early learning experiences to a new platform,” vp, publisher Random House/Golden Books Young Readers Group Kate Klimo said in a statement. Release On Valentine’s Day Piatkus […]
DBW: Talking Around the Edges of Libraries and eBooks
The dialogue between publishers and libraries over the potential for ebook lending continued at DBW on Wednesday. In the panel Discovery and Libraries in an Age of Few Bookstores, librarians and their allies talked up the library as a place for publishers to make direct connections to readers, and the value of readers’ advisory, the librarian as a human discovery engine. Random House director of account marketing Ruth Liebmann said Random House, the only big six house that provides library ebook lending without limitations, is now telling the audio reps they send to libraries to talk about other formats as […]
When Larry Met Jeffrey
Bloomberg Business Week’s Brad Stone is working on a book about Amazon (not disclosed in the online version of next week’s cover story) and we should all hope that his editors help him root his narrative more in facts than the magazine piece. Here, you “big publishers” are sitting around “in high-rise offices” with “resplendent views”–while making the “screech of a small woodland creature being pursued by a jungle predator.” (Readers do not learn of Amazon Publishing NY’s space at 1350 Avenue of the Americas.) Book publishing is “an inefficient industry if there ever was one”–unlike, say, magazine publishing, where […]
DBW: Verso Survey Finds Less Price Resistance, More Piracy, and Shift to Tablets
As we reported in advance of DBW, Verso’s survey indicates a continuing rise in ereading resisters, with over half of respondents “not at all likely” to purchase a dedicated reading device. But part of that may be due to the rising attraction of tablets, which were a separate query item. Over 15 percent of people say they already own a tablet–about the same adoption as for ereaders–but here another 21 percent are somewhat to very likely to buy one in the next year (compared to about 15 percent likely ereader buyers). Verso’s Jack McKeown believes that the “picture of the […]
Amazon’s Grandinetti Says to Invent the Future
A year ago Amazon vp, Kindle content Russ Grandinetti told the audience at Digital Book World, “however fast you think this change is happening, its probably happening faster than you think.” On Wednesday morning, Grandinetti returned to an even larger DBW audience that has just experienced that year of rapid change (or catching up). “If you’re worried about the shape of the future, the best way to predict it is to invent it.” Grandinetti called on publishers to have “bravery” in these new times that can “feel scary to all of us in some ways” and “envision what you want […]