Molly Barton will move up to global digital director at Penguin as of December 1. She takes over from Dan Ruffino, who is returning home to Australia. At HarperCollins, Beth Silfin has been promoted to the newly created position of vp, deputy general counsel, responsible for overseeing the contracts department in working directly with literary agents on contracts and rights negotiations. As a result of the change in how the legal and contracts department is organized, vp, associate general counsel Tom Ward will leave the company after more than 15 years. In addition, Cindy DiTiberio has been promoted to senior […]
Social Network
Subtext Joins the Social Scene
Social reading has yet to take off among ebook readers, but it’s already a hit among technologists and venture capitalists. The latest entry, launching today, is Subtext, an iPad app created by a group of people from the gaming world. With an announced $3 million in seed capital from Google Ventures, Mayfield Fund, New Enterprise Associates and Omidyar Network, Subtext is run by ceo Andrew Goldman, who was ceo of Pandemic when it was sold to Electronic Arts. Other founders include cto Adam Iarossi, a Pandemic colleague, and vp of marketing Rachel Thomas, who worked at game company Playdom, sold […]
eNews: Bloomsbury Reader Launches To Rescue OOP Works
As announced in May, Bloomsbury has launched their digital and POD imprint for out-of-print works, Bloomsbury Reader. Called a “digital global publisher,” their initial list of roughly 560 books focuses on authors and estates represented by their “founder partner” PFD/The Rights House, though they continue to invite the participation of other estates and agencies. Ingram has a new partnership with logistics company SBS Worldwide to provide their client publishers with greater supply chain visibility on their titles. The two companies will “also consolidate on major freight lanes and offer competitive rates on global transportation.” Kobo announced a new update to […]
eNews: Will Facebook “Like” Reading?; Color Purple to Open Road; and More
Facebook is expected to make significant announcements at Thursday’s f8 developer conference about integrating media into the site, including “a huge package of wide-ranging news, video and music partnerships, and a structure for sharing content activity inside and outside of Facebook.” AllThingsD reports that the motto for the event is, “Read. Watch. Listen.” The “read” theme may apply more to news (Yahoo is said to be among the “publisher” partners)–though Tech Crunch says the “like” button will get more nuanced, with the addition of “Read,” “Listened” and “Watch” buttons (plus one called “Want”). ATD TC Open Road has licensed ebook […]
eNews: iBookstore Quick Reads; Odyl for Facebook Campaigns; BN Partners With Appcelerator; and More
Apple’s iBookstore has joined Kindle Singles in providing a store-within-the-store for short-form digital book content with Quick Reads, a compendium of short stories, longer pieces of journalism and manuals priced between 99 cents and $4.99. MacWorld To help publishers and authors maximize their interaction on Facebook, Odyl is officially rolling out a platform that will help them do so on a much larger scale. Aside from pulling reviews from Goodreads, administering galley giveaways and making book excerpts available to users who “like” Facebook pages, Odyl says its platform “collects rich audience data specific to titles and readers, providing an invaluable […]
Facebook Buys Push Pop Press, Kills Their Product
Facebook acquired epublishing technology start-up Push Pop Press for undisclosed terms, but the appeal was clearly not their publishing platform that promised to provide “digital storytelling” tools that would enable anyone to turn text, images and multimedia into an enhanced book app with drag-and-drop ease. “There are no plans” for “building out” that platform or continuing to publish more titles like the Al Gore book-based app Our Choice that the company was created to build, Push Pop’s Mike Matas and Kimon Tsinteris write on their site. Instead they say “we’re taking our publishing technology and everything we’ve learned and are […]