Barnes & Noble issued a brief preliminary report on bookstore sales for the nine-week holiday period, saying that comparable store sales rose 9.7 percent through January 1. Results were driven by the the Nook reading devices, with BN saying they had the largest single day of store sales in the company’s history on December 23. They will report more details on January 6, when we may get a better glimpse of how book sales held up. Most notable about today’s report is that results were ahead of the company’s own forecast at the end of November, when they told analysts […]
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Agent Jonathan Dolger, 72, Dies
Sadly we report the first obituary of the new year: Jonathan Dolger, renowned editor and agent, and husband of Jane Isay, died on New Year’s Day. He was 72. A longtime editor at Simon & Schuster and Harper, he published The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck, Against our Will, by Susan Brownmiller, and many popular novels including Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Oh, God, and To An Early Grave. As an agent he represented Scott Peck, Rebecca Wells, and many others. He was treasured for his wit, warmth and excellent judgment. Funeral services will be held on Tuesday, January […]
WikiLeaks Assange Is Writing to Raise Funds
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange claims he had to sell a memoir to raise funds to defend himself, telling the Times of London, “I don’t want to write this book, but I have to. I have already spent [more than $300,000] for legal costs, and I need to defend myself and keep WikiLeaks afloat.” Did anyone tell him how long it was going to take collect his advance? Assange says Knopf is paying about $800,000 and Canongate is paying him approximately $500,000. He estimates that money from serialization and other territories will add another few hundred thousand dollars, though again its […]
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Abigail Cleaves will join Shreve Williams Public Relations as associate director of publicity on January 17. She has been assistant publicity director at the Penguin Press, where she has worked for the past five years. Courtney Allison will join Vintage/Anchor as a senior publicist. She has been publicist at Palgrave Macmillan, and was previously at Viking Penguin.
WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Has Memoirs Coming from Knopf and Canongate In March
Canongate bought rights to Julian Assange’s memoirs for the UK and translations from Caroline Michel at PFD but he won’t be contemplating his life for long, due to deliver a manuscript in March 2011 for publication later in the year. Knopf bought rights here. Daily Finance
Random CEO Writes on Year’s Highlights
Random House ceo Markus Dohle writes to employees worldwide to “celebrate a good fiscal year for Random House worldwide despite the hurdle of ailing economies in most of our territories.” Among the highlights, Stieg Larsson Millennium trilogy is “on course to sell 14 million copies in 2010” in the US across all formats, with another 2 million trade paperbacks and e-books in Germany. Worldwide digital sales are expected to be up by 250 percent over 2009, and in the US he acknowledges that “for some of our fall publication titles, nearly half of the overall first-week sales have been in […]