Macmillan has made good on ceo John Sargent’s reluctant promise in his end-of-2014 letter to “test subscription” program. The company will make available 1,000 titles — including science fiction & fantasy novels by Elizabeth Bear, Orson Scott Card, and Ursula K. LeGuin, to novels and nonfiction by Michel Foucault, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Louis Menand — on both Scribd and Oyster‘s ebook subscription services. In his December letter to authors and agents, Sargent had written that they would focus on “backlist books, and mostly … titles that are not well represented at bricks and mortar retail stores.” Macmillan has already making ebooks available for sale on Scribd; […]
eNews
New Agency Returns
Two of the large publishers that announced new multiyear sales agreements with Amazon late last year have resumed their latest version of agency ebook pricing. Simon & Schuster and Macmillan are both selling ebooks under their newest model of the agency model. (Remember that, given the current Federal Court injunction imposed on Apple, none of the original agency publishers can currently restrict Apple’s ability to discount ebooks — and even new agency sales agreements may allow other accounts a measure of price-matching when Apple discounts.) In keeping with prior practice, Amazon now lists most of the ebooks from those houses with the note, “This price […]
Briefs: Saramago Estate to Wylie; THE HUSBAND’S SECRET in Paperback; and More
Once again, a prominent literary estate has switched representation to The Wylie Agency. The estate of Jose Saramago announced the change as of December 30, 2014, saying “this shift to a larger literary agency emerges as a natural step to ensure greater presence” of Saramago’s work. They briefly thanked Nicole Witt at Literary Agency Mertin, Saramago’s longtime agency (first under the late Ray-Gude Mertin). Witt expressed “great surprise” at the “short email” from the estate notifying her of the change. She writes, in part, “When I said goodbye to José Saramago in Lanzarote in June 2010, shortly before he passed away, I […]
Whatever Is Happening with Tablet and eReader Sales, Apple’s App Store Had Record New Year’s
There are a variety of indications that sales of dedicated ereading devices as well as tablets (or at least non-Apple tablets) were weak over the holiday period — perhaps because those who want them already have them, and the devices are all solid enough that they do not require continuous replacement cycles. Apple announced in a press release that “the first week of January set a new record for billings from the App Store with customers around the world spending nearly half a billion dollars on apps and in-app purchases, and New Year’s Day 2015 marked the single biggest day […]
UK Booksellers Report Good Holiday Sales (And Low Kindle eReader Sales)
Two UK bookstore chains reported encouraging holiday sales. Waterstones says print book sales were up 5 percent in December, and Foyles said same-store book sales were up 11 percent for the holiday. With 290 stores, Waterstones now expects to open a dozen or more new stores during 2015. Both booksellers also reported weak sales for ereading devices — which should hardly be a surprise, as most consumers have moved on tablets and ereading loyalists are most likely to buy directly from their platform of choice rather than stumbling on devices through a third party. Waterstones said Kindle device sales “disappeared to […]
Briefs
Following Macmillan ceo John Sargent’s indication that they will, with some reluctance, “test subscription in the coming weeks,” Oyster announced that their collection now includes over 1,000 titles published by Bloomsbury. Harper UK has disclosed their annual results for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2014. Sales fell to £179 million, down £11 million from the prior year, while profits rebounded from terrible to just low, with pre-tax earnings of £7.2 million (still, much better than £2.8 million the year before). The company said profits were held down by £3.5 million related to their planned relocation to new offices in 2015. The Bookseller […]