In Canada, Suzanne Brandreth and Ron Eckel are now full owners of The Cooke Agency International, the foreign rights branch of The Cooke Agency, after both being responsible for its day-to-day operations for the past three years. Dean Cooke and Sally Harding will remain owners of the originating agency, and will continue to personally represent their extensive list of authors. Brandreth and Eckel will continue to represent their own authors through The Cooke Agency as well as all their clients at Cooke International. Tapas Media, a mobile app offering bite-size content from books and comics, has partnered with Hachette Book […]
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Briefs: Emeritus Pope Benedict’s ‘Last Testament’; Rakuten Takes Minority Stake in getAbstract; and More
Forthcoming Bloomsbury will publish Emeritus Pope Benedict‘s Last Testament worldwide in November, in which the retired pope will formally break his silence after being the first Pope to resign from his position in 750 years. Bloomsbury says Pope Benedict will address “controversies and reveals how at his late age, governing and reforming the Papacy and particularly the Vatican, was beyond him” and “admit that he entirely lacked Pope Francis’s common touch with people.” The book is co-written with Peter Seewald and translated by Jacob Phillips. Investments Rakuten announced it has agreed to acquire a “substantial minority stake” in getAbstract, which […]
Announcements: PRH Pairs with InstaFreebie, Amazon Gets Permission to Test Drone Functions In UK
The Random House Publishing Group has joined HarperCollins in working with InstaFreebie to promote pre-publication book excerpts. (Harper acquired The Midlist, a deals email newsletter run by InstaFreebie’s parent company, last October.) InstaFreebie currently reaches approximately 300,000 consumers and delivers excerpts via email, providing optional social DRM — which RHPG is using on their excerpts. As ceo Jason Freeman notes in the release, “Readers who receive advanced access will frequently buy, review, and/or recommend the book.” For RHPG, in addition to the direction promotional value, the relationship is part of their larger initiative to build up their consumer email lists by millions of […]
Briefs: Johnson’s Book on Shakespeare Delayed or Cancelled, and More
Newly appointed UK foreign secretary and Brexit campaign leader Boris Johnson‘s forthcoming book on Shakespeare, scheduled for release on November 15 from Hodder & Stoughton and Riverhead, will not be published this year, and may not be published at all according to the Daily Mail. They report Johnson “is believed to be having to pay back a £500,000 advance” to Hodder & Stoughton having “conceded he doesn’t have the time” to write the book. A spokesperson for Riverhead put it differently, writing: “In light of his new responsibilities in the UK, Boris Johnson will be unable to complete his book […]
Briefs: Amazon’s Inspire; Nook Press’s Print Platform
Attentive readers will remember that back in February we were the first to write about Amazon K-12 Education, a unit working on “improving the education of students with services for teachers, students and parents.” Those efforts were focused on “building a large discoverable library of open educational resources for K-12 teachers across the country, using Amazon’s scale and experience.” And the objectives included building distribution options for traditional content as well: “Imagine a school district that wants to put ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ e-book on thousands of tablets for their students to read – a single click of a […]
Briefs: Empresa’s New Books Division; Amazon Updates Kindle; and More
Czech media conglomerate Empresa has launched a books division, Publishing Perspectives reports. The company released its first three titles this month and expects to publish 15 titles by the end of 2016. Empresa already owns an online bookstore which sells more than 170,000 titles by over 4,000 publishers. Amazon released its newest version of the 6″ Kindle, retailing for $99.99 (or $79.99 with ads) and weighing 5.7 ounces. The new Kindle features 4 GB of memory, built-in Bluetooth for audio support, and up to four weeks of battery life on a single charge. Separately, Amazon announced its latest fulfillment center […]