Book Industry Study Group executive director Scott Lubeck is leaving his position “for personal reasons” and will return to his home in Austin, TX. Lubeck took over at the BISG in January 2010. Deputy Executive Director Angela Bole will fulfill the functions of the executive director on an interim basis, and a search committee has been formed and will work with Bert Davis & Associates to look for a replacement to lead the organization.
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When Anything Can Be A “Book,” Anything Is A Book–At Least 3.1 Million In 2010 Alone
It’s time for the reporting of annual publishing statistics and as usual, the most profound numbers for us are the unreported ones. The bigger and more technologically-fueled book publishing gets, the less we actually know about the universe in which we all work. It all comes back to the metadata mess, in which many newer players do not use standard identifiers at all for their books, and even traditional players have not agreed on a single practice. The “known universe” clearly continues to expand, and we infer that the darker “unknown universe” is doing the same. Today, Bowker’s Books In […]
Authors: Roth Wins Man Booker International, with Controversy; Nesbo Opening Week Sales; and More
Knopf has been positioning Jo Nesbo‘s THE SNOWMAN as its big summer thriller breakout, and they report selling 20,000 total copies so far of the May 10 release – with digital making up as much as 65 percent, at 13,000 units sold. Since every media outlet under the sun has wondered whether Nesbo is “the next Stieg Larsson,” it’s worth noting that THE SNOWMAN exceeded sales of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO by 2,000 units during the same time frame. “The Larsson comp is significant because it demonstrates how much shift there has been in our business in under […]
People: Lotts, Schelling Open New Agencies
Chris Lotts and Christopher Schelling have left Ralph Vicinanza Ltd to open new agencies. The Lotts Agency will continue Lotts’s representation of commercial fiction and targeted upmarket non-fiction in a mix of domestic and foreign rights, working on behalf of Stephen King, George R.R. Martin, Robin Hobb, Connie Willis, Robert J. Sawyer R. Scott Bakker, Stacia Kane and Lia Hable, among many others. At Schelling’s new shop, Selectric Artists, he will continue with authors like Augusten Burroughs, Cinda Williams Chima, John Elder Robison, Louis Bayard, Kim Stanley Robinson and Haven Kimmel, while also expanding his representation into other media, such […]
Technology and Treats (Part One: Appiness)
Last year we happily experimented with creating web apps to organize and inform the BEA experience, and now we are back with new and improved versions. Two new features come directly from user feedback: 1. The iOS and Android versions use some HTML 5 magic to work offline as well as online. That means that when the mysterious Javits Center electromagnetic force field renders you unable to connect to either a cell tower or wifi at 21st-century speeds, the Publishers Lunch BEA to Go app will still let you search the events schedule and exhibitor directory. Just make sure that […]
Technology and Treats (Part Two: Bloginess)
We’re also unveiling another months-in-the-making upgrade to PublishersMarketplace.com and Publishers Lunch today. The Publishers Lunch news page and archive has left behind the 10-year-old platform we’ve been working with and moved to WordPress, with a new design and a number of new features. For now the change in your daily mail is simple: click any headline and it will take you to the site-based permalink, where we welcome your comments. Also, readers are so accustomed to getting Lunch by e-mail that they often didn’t know how to find the story links to share via blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc. In the […]