Macmillan ceo John Sargent wrote to agents earlier this week to present for the first time a new standardized boilerplate contract across all of the trade publisher’s imprints and divisions that the company intends to introduce as of November 9, featuring a number of comprehensive changes in their basic business terms. The goal, he writes, is “to facilitate a more efficient contracting process, for ourselves as well as for our authors and their agents, and to make sure our author agreements reflect current business realities.” One notable effect, as agent Richard Curtis underscores on his blog, is a proposed new […]
eNews
Harper Launches Vaynerchuk Vook–More Features, At 60% of Hardcover Price
Vook has partnered with Harper Studio and author Gary Vaynerchuk on their latest production, a version of the recently-published CRUSH IT! that may be the most natural pairing of book material and short videos. While the price point is higher than the inaugural Vooks released by Atria recently, at $11.99 the Vaynerchuk Vook offers the complete text of the book along with 17 videos for much less than the $19.99 book. And video is Vaynerchuk’s natural medium, from the Wine Library videos that built his reputation to his obscenity-sprinkled motivational presentations of his rise to success. Harper Studio associate publisher […]
People and Distribution News
At the Simon & Schuster imprint, both Kerri Kolen and Sarah Hochman have been promoted to senior editor. Both started at S&S as editorial assistants, Kolen in 2002 and Hochman in 2004. As publisher David Rosenthal notes, “That each has risen through the ranks here is a tribute to the strength of this imprint, and its collegiality. It is also, of course, a recognition of the diligence and creativity of Kerri and Sarah – I am very proud of their growth as editors and publishers, their contributions to our list.” At Adams Media, Chelsea King is moving over to become […]
Market News: K-12 Down Sharply at McGraw-Hill; Market Kicks BN
McGraw-Hill reported third quarter sales, with their education division dropping 11.6 percent to $1 billion compared, as operating profit fell 16 percent to $298 million. The decline came entirely from the K-12 line, which fell almost 20 percent, “in a 2009 state new adoption market that deteriorated all year as budgetary pressures led a growing number of school districts to postpone purchases.”Release Meanwhile, Barnes & Noble can’t catch a break from Wall Street analysts no matter what they do. On Friday Credit Suisse reduced their target price for the company to $16 per share (about two dollars below its current […]
Friday's E-News Roundup
In the UK, a survey of heavy book-buying habits conducted by Book Marketing Limited and Lovereading demonstrated that while 56% of the approximately 1,300 respondents use the Internet to find out about books, social networks were less useful as a recommendation tool – only 34% found social networks as a whole to be helpful, and Twitter even less so (at 17%). The figures contrast with author and retailer websites, which 83% found “useful” when taken in total. (Of course, when Facebook now allegedly accounts for 1 in 4 pageviews, one could argue about what the definition of a website is […]
Stephen King eBook Release Strategy Follows the Palin Model
Scribner disclosed yesterday that they will issue an ebook version of Stephen King’s forthcoming new hardcover UNDER THE DOME, set for hardcover publication on November 10 at $35.00, on Sunday, December 24. Spokesman Adam Rothberg says, “Given the current state of the marketplace and trends in digital book pricing, we believe that this is the most appropriate publishing sequence for this particular 1088 page work of fiction.” Stephen King echoes the last-month pre-price-war strategy of “we’re doing it to help the bookstores,” though at least he recognizes the irony. He tells the WSJ, “I never thought we’d see people preordering […]