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 […]
eNews
Hachette UK Acquires Neon Play
Hachette UK announced they have acquired Neon Play, a British-based mobile games development company. Co-owners Oli Christie, Mark Allen and their team will continue to be based in Cirencester running Neon Play as a stand-alone business under the Hachette UK umbrella, reporting to Richard Kitson. Hachette UK ceo Tim Hely Hutchinson and executives Kitson and Pierre de Cacqueray will join the board of Neon Play. Terms of the deal were undisclosed but Hutchinson told the Bookseller it was a “substantial acquisition designed to lead to substantial revenues”, and was also a “serious first step” for Hachette in a bid to […]
People, Etc.
Meghan Deans will join Ecco on June 13 as marketing director. She has been at Little, Brown, most recently as director of social media. At Clarkson Potter, Kim Tyner has been promoted to assistant production director. Harper Christian reports that longtime employee and vp of custom product development Joseph “Scott” Harvey, 52, died on Friday after a five-month battle to cancer. Harvey joined Thomas Nelson as a national accounts manager in May 2000. SVP of sales Tom Knight says, “Our friendship surpassed just being colleagues, as did most that ever had the opportunity to work with Scott. In addition to Scott’s larger-than-life personality his business acumen […]
Macmillan Acquires Pronoun (FKA As Vook, Plus Booklr and Byliner)
Macmillan announced on Thursday that they have acquired Pronoun, the pivoted version of the company that began life as Vook (originally creating ebooks with embedded videos) in 2009 and over the years incorporated Booklr and Byliner. In its latest incarnation, Pronoun’s focus has been an ebook distribution platform for authors that has said they charge no conversion, posting or distribution fees. Current pronoun ceo Josh Brody, who came to the company with their Booklr acquisition in 2014, will serve as president of Pronoun at Macmillan, and chief product officer Ben Zhuk will be vp, product for Macmillan. Macmillan coo Andrew Weber says in the announcement, “We’ve been impressed […]
Briefs: BookBub to Offer Paid Ads; Applebaum, Potash Honored; and More
Initiatives BookBub, which promotes selected ebook price deals as paid promotions, is now starting to add paid advertisements as well. (Advertised books do not need to be discounted, or subject to BookBub’s other criteria for editorial filtering.) Pricing is based on CPM auctions. Awards The annual UJA-Federation of New York Publishing Division dinner on Wednesday night featured a few twists, honoring a digital reading pioneer for the first time, and celebrating two men with longstanding family connections to the UJA — emeritus evp, corporate communications, Penguin Random House Stuart Applebaum through his father, and president and ceo of Overdrive Steve Potash […]
Waterstones Exits eBooks and Digital Audio; Transfers Customers to Kobo
Waterstones is giving up on ebooks again and — perhaps more importantly in the long-term, also walking away from the still-growing digital audio market. The company told their digital media customers by email and posted site notice that “the Waterstones digital download store is closing,” and digital files are no longer available for sale on their web site. Customers who purchased ebooks are having their libraries transferred to Kobo, as of June 14. Digital audio customers are being abandoned in full; their only recourse is to “please ensure that all the MP3s in your library are downloaded to your chosen […]