The last of the big six trade publishers to at least try lending ebooks to libraries, Simon & Schuster announced on Monday their first experiment: A one-year pilot program with the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Public Library, and the Queens Public Library that will make available S&S’s complete catalog of ebooks, with new titles available immediately upon publication. Manhattan and Brooklyn’s program will start lending April 30, with Queens to follow suit in mid-May. Under the pilot program, the three library systems can acquire any S&S ebook title at any time, with each title available for use for […]
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Perseus and WME Sponsor Book Discovery App “Hackathon”
Perseus and William Morris Endeavor are organizing a content to help motivate programmers to develop some kind of digital innovation–a web site, app or widget–to help expose booklovers to new book titles online. A 36-hour Publishing Hacka-thon will begin May 18 at co-working space The Alley NYC. The finalists will move on to a presentation at BEA, judgd by Perseus ceo David Steinberger, William Morris Endeavor’s Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, and Stephen Evans at private equity firm Silver Lake (which owns a stake in WME). The prize is $10,000, and a pitch meeting with WME’s ceo Ari Emanuel. Crains
Corporate: HMH Buys Tribal Nova; Penguin Partners with Mind Candy; Amazon Defends “Heavy Investments”
Two new acquisitions highlight publishers’ increasing interest in game development. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced they acquired Montreal-based educational technology company Tribal Nova, which develops digital games, products and services for pre-school children. The Tribal Nova team will continue to operate out of Montreal, though they will be absorbed into HMH’s Content and Product Innovation group, dedicated to the incubation and development of next-generation content for both K-12 and consumer markets. “The combination of Tribal Nova’s game development expertise with HMH’s proven educational content and learning design capabilities will enable HMH to bring a more holistic and personalized gaming experience to market,” […]
People: Futter Named Publisher of Twelve as Goldstein Leaves to “Pursue Other Interests”
Cary Goldstein is leaving Twelve after seven years, the last two as the imprint’s publisher, to “pursue other interests.” Grand Central president and publisher Jamie Raab said in the announcement that Goldstein has contributed an enormous amount to the imprint’s many successes.” He will remain at Twelve through May 1 as part of the transition that will see Grand Central vp, editor-in-chief Deb Futter will add to her existing duties responsibility for the Twelve imprint as publisher. Futter has been at Grand Central since 2007. “I can’t think of a sharper or more experienced editorial voice to shape this dynamic […]
With Self Publishing At 25% of Sales, Nook Pairs with FastPencil for Revamped Nook Press Service
Barnes & Noble has revamped their PubIt! self-publishing service under the less awkward name of Nook Press. The new version includes content creation and publishing tools that let authors upload a manuscript and then continue to revise and edit it within the tool, before creating an epub file. It also offers collaboration tools that allow authors “to safely and quickly invite their network of friends and editors to read and comment on any Nook Press project in a secure environment.” The new technology is built in partnership with FastPencil. Nook says that self-published ebooks now comprise 25 percent of all […]
BooksOnBoard Suspends Sales
Longstanding independent ebookstore BooksOnBoard is at least temporarily out of the business. The site is on limited “account only access,” and a message indicates: “BooksOnBoard has temporarily stopped selling books. We are re-structuring to compete more effectively against Goliaths who have entered our marketplace since we first launched in 2006…. We expect to be back with our new business model soon. Meanwhile, customers can continue to download their prior purchases as long as the publisher and their distributors continue to make them available – same as always and out of our control. As in the past, it’s always wise to […]