At today’s Publishers Launch Conference on Book Publishing In the Cloud, Hachette Book Group chief operating officer Ken Michaels announced three software-as-a-service offerings that the publisher developed for their own use and will now make available for license by other publishers, “allowing the industry to take advantage of our innovations.” BookRadar, developed with and now marketed by CoEnterprise, lets publishers automatically monitor how their digital titles are displayed on key retailer sites. It highlights discrepancies (or compliance) in pricing as well on sale availability and release dates–compared to the publisher’s own ONIX data–and creates vendor performance scorecards. Separately, it also […]
Publisher services
eNews: Nook Finally Comes to the Web; Selectric Artists Launches eBook Imprint for Clients; And More
Barnes & Noble finally introduced its own free digital reading experience for browsers, NOOK for Web, for PC and Mac. Complimentary titles available for those who try the new offering through July 26 include Map of Bones by James Rollins, Sex and the City by Candace Bushnell, The Vow by Kim Carpenter, The Boxcar Children Summer Special by Gertrude Chandler Warner, Brave by Tennant Redbank and Perfect Island Getaways by Patricia Schultz. Christopher Schelling at Selectric Artists has launched a new ebook imprint, Roadswell Editions, for backlist and frontlist titles by clients. The launch title is Kathe Koja’s 1991 horror […]
People, Etc.
At Ten Speed Press, Lisa Westmoreland has been promoted to senior editor. Jeff Olson has been promoted to executive editor, Business at Apress, a division of Springer Science+Business Media. Marc Visnick has joined Callisto Media as director of sales. He was most recently director of sales, North America for Lonely Planet. Claire Kelley has joined Melville House Books as director, academic and library marketing. She was most recently marketing manager at Free Press. In addition, Dustin Kurtz has been named marketing manager, responsible for the company’s bookseller outreach programs and marketing for its series publications. Previously he was a buyer […]
Some IPG Publishers Go DRM-Free
When IPG-distributed ebooks were inactive at Amazon.com for three months as the two companies renegotiated selling terms, some observers suggested that IPG clients would be in stronger position if their titles were available DRM-free–and could be read on Kindle devices even without being sold in the Kindle store. Tuesday the distributor announced that Chicago Review Press (owned by the same parent company) as well as clients ECW Press, Medallion Press and Triumph Books are removing DRM and selling their 1,100 or so ebooks without it. IPG says they are now offering all clients the option to sell their ebooks without DRM. […]
People, Etc.
Kate Lee will leave ICM on April 30 after nearly ten years with the agency. She is also stepping back from book agenting to pursue new opportunities; her clients, who include Jeff Jarvis, Brian Stelter, Charles Finch, and Adam Penenberg, will remain with ICM. Perseus has finally announced, after we reported it in early February, that Writers House has signed on with its Argo Navis author services program, which the agency will offer to its authors looking to distribute their works digitally. “After reviewing many of the digital publishing options available, we concluded that the service provided by Argo Navis […]
Two Distributors Do Sign with Kindle–And Pay eBook Coop
While IPG remains in what could be a long-standing contractual disagreement with Amazon over wholesale terms for their clients–and their approximately 4,500 ebooks remain unavailable for sale on Kindle–two other independent distributors of scale did both come to terms with Amazon in the past week or so. Both the Perseus Books Group and National Book Network (NBN) reported to their respective clients on the new terms arrived for ebooks. Those new contracts were some time in the making; one of the two told clients they “entered into negotiations with Amazon in October of last year and have only just concluded […]