At Scribner, Lauren Lavelle has been promoted to publicity manager, and Gwyneth Stansfield moves up to publicist. Riverhead art director Helen Yentus won the ADC Art + Craft Design Prize for her much talked about 3D-printed book design for Chang-rae Lee’s On Such a Full Sea. Booktrack, which synchronizes soundtracks to ebooks, announced the completion of $3 million in Series A financing led by Sparkbox Ventures. The company is expanding into education with Booktrack Classroom, which gives students free access to soundtracked ebooks. Simon & Schuster has officially adjusted the release date for Hillary Clinton‘s still-untitled new memoir to June […]
eNews
Wattpad Takes $46 Million It Doesn’t Need Yet; PRH UK Announces Reader Bookshelves; New eBook Courses and Certificates
Wattpad announced in a press release that it has raised $46 million in Series C funding, led by OMERS Ventures with participation from August Capital, Raine Ventures, and Northleaf Venture Catalyst Fund. Wattpad’s existing investors also participated in the round. The company will use the funds to expand their staff in Toronto and move to new office space, along with “support[ing] product development and community growth.” CEO Allen Lau admits to Gigaom they don’t really need the money, and still have much of their previous round of $17.3 million in financing from 2012 on hand. Over half of their users […]
LBF Announcements: Isaacson’s Innovators; Chevalier’s Othello; Shatzkin and McCarthy’s Digital Marketing Agency
Simon & Schuster likes to officially announce their Walter Isaacson books at the London Book Fair. Acquired some time ago, and already previewed online by the author, they will publish Isaacson’s THE INNOVATORS: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, in world English on October 7. The book “focuses on the dozen or so most significant breakthroughs and the people who made them: the computer, programming, the transistor, the microchip, video games, the internet, the personal computer, software, the web. The book opens with Ada Lovelace, who wrote the first computer algorithm, and continues […]
A Strong Finish for Trade, Even with eBook Decline, As Every Other Major Publishing Segment Rises In 2013
Trade publishing finished 2013 with two strong months of sales, according to the publishers who report to the AAP, closing the gap to put full-year trade sales a little shy of the big 2012 results. Measured sales from the approximately 1,200 reporting publishers were $6.441 billion for 2013, down by $74 million (or 1 percent) from 2012 — which was a banner year, thanks to the Hunger Games and Fifty Shades trilogies. (By comparison, total AAP trade sales in 2011 were $6.082 billion, when Borders went bankrupt and liquidated.) November sales of $651 million were up strongly, by $62 million […]
People, Etc.
At Crown Business, Ayelet Gruenspecht has been promoted to marketing manager, while Megan Perritt moves up to publicity manager for the imprint as well as for Crown Forum. In addition, associate publisher for Crown Forum and Three Rivers Press Campbell Wharton will take on an additional role in project directing Crown Business campaigns on a case-by-case basis. At the Random House Publishing Group, Sam Nicholson and Anna Pitoniak have been promoted to editor. Mika Kasuga, Caitlin McKenna, and Molly Turpin have been promoted to assistant editor. Dervla Kelly will join Rodale as senior editor on April 7. Previously she was an […]
eNews: Verso’s eBook/Print Bundle; DropBox Rumored to Buy ReadMill; and More
Verso Books will sell its books, both print and digital, direct on its website as of April 8, and will also offer print/ebook bundles for all new titles and “hundreds” of recent ones (free postage is also included.) Verso is working with Booxstream on DRM, and each ebook will be visibly watermarked. In a statement managing director Jacob Stevens said Verso readers can choose which title to read regardless of format, print or digital. We know that our core readership would like to support radical publishing directly, and we hope that this new approach will benefit our writers, readers, and […]