As part of McGraw-Hill Education’s ongoing spinoff from the main company, the division has a new president and ceo in Lloyd G. “Buzz” Waterhouse as of June 14, reporting to company president, ceo and chairman Terry McGraw. Waterhouse was previously ceo of Harcourt Education and most recently served as a director of a number of companies including SolarWinds, ITT Educational Services and Ascend Learning. “Buzz is a superb choice to lead the world-class franchise we’ve built in McGraw-Hill Education,” McGraw said in a statement. “Buzz’s exceptional record of leadership, his qualifications in the education sector, substantial international credentials, significant experience […]
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Natasha Trethewey has been named the newest Poet Laureate by the US Library of Congress. NYT Philip Roth has won Spain’s Asturias Prize, given to an author “whose literary work represents a significant contribution to universal literature.” The Overlook Press will publish The Russian Library, an “ambitious one hundred and twenty five volume series of translated Russian fiction, drama, and poetry”, over the next ten years, the publisher announced Wednesday at BEA. Overlook is working with (and is sponsored by) Read Russia on the project, which will feature classic and contemporary Russian works and launch in Fall 2013 with five […]
People: Ray Bradbury, 91, Dies
Science fiction giant Ray Bradbury, 91, died Tuesday night in Los Angeles after a long illness, his grandson Danny Karapetian and biographer Sam Weller confirmed to i09. Bradbury, author of more than 600 short stories, and 30 novels including classic works such as THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES and FAHRENHEIT 451, had only this year made those two books and other novels available in digital editions, published by Simon & Schuster. “If I had to make any statement, it would be how much I love and miss him, and I look forward to hearing everyone’s memories about him,” Karapetian said. “He influenced […]
Teicher Promises New Indie eBook Solution, Calls Again for Letters to DOJ
At the American Booksellers Association’s annual meeting at BEA, ABA chief executive Oren Teicher celebrated encouraging membership and indie sales data and reinforced that “I believe this moment in our industry is rich with promise and opportunity.” (In addition to the data we have already reported, Teicher declared that across the network of Indie Commerce stores, “gross annual sales, year-to-date over year-to-date, are up 92 percent.” And separately, ABA board vice president Steve Bercu clarified that the reported gain of 55 new full ABA members comprises 77 new locations in all.) Teicher told members “you have our strongest assurance that there […]
BEA Kicks Off with Colbert, Diaz, Kingsolver and Nesbo
Book Expo America kicked off Tuesday morning’s author breakfast with attendees lined up early to enter and offered the classic mix of humor, appreciation and creative inspiration. In a new twist, BEA is live streaming the marquee convention events, and the stream actually worked. (We have the player on the PublishersMarketplace.com home page, and you can find it on many other trade sites, as well as BEA’s own site.) Emcee Stephen Colbert was in classic form, setting the stage for “three of the world’s best authors of books other than mine.” Of his own forthcoming book AMERICA AGAIN: Re-Becoming the […]
“Traditional” Print Titles Grew Almost 6 Percent in 2011, As POD Factories Pulled Back
Bowker followed those self-publishing-focused statistics we noted yesterday with the formal release of their estimates of print book production in 2011. What they call “traditional” output–which includes self-publishers like Create Space, but excludes public domain POD factories like BiblioBazaar–grew for the sixth consecutive year. The preliminary title count was 347,178, up almost 6 percent from 2010’s final count of 328,259. (NB we have observed that the final count is almost always higher than the preliminary tally; that 2010 number listed here is about 12,000 titles higher than the preliminary estimate issued this time a year ago.) As reported yesterday, at […]