We noted in late July that RedGroup–the dominant bookseller in Australia and New Zealand under the Whitcoulls, Angus & Robertson and Borders ANZ operations–was talking to its lenders about getting a waiver from an expected breach of their borrowing covenants. (Even so, they were reportedly projecting ebitda of approximately $25 million AU for their fiscal year ending in late August.) A new story in Crikey cites industry sources whom claim the group “has been forced to jack up prices, increase returns and extend trading terms with its suppliers.” One anonymous publisher says the chains have asked for 120 days to […]
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eReaders: Asian Producer Predicts More than 10 Million Units, But None of Them, Officially, Will Come from Plastic Logic; Amazon Wants to be Apple?
Chairman of Taiwan-based E Ink Holding Scott Liu says he expects his company’s ereader shipments to double or triple in the second half of 2010 as price cuts drive volume. Liu now anticipates full-year shipments will exceed 10 million units in 2010. He also indicates that “vendors will soon be able to provide sub-US $100 e-book readers judging from the market growth, and E Ink will help clients further lower the production costs.” E Ink Holding produces the screens for clients including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Sony and Hanvon.DigiTimes Meanwhile, the king of overpriced ereader vaporware Plastic Logic has admitted […]
People
Former Billboard and Hollywood reporter pbulisher and one-time ceo of IDG books John Kilcullen has joined web-based self-publisher FastPencil’s board of directors. Kilcullen is now a brand management consultant based in California.
eNews: Houghton Negotiates with Pat Conroy to Allow Release of Open Road Backlist eBooks, and More
The stalemate over electronic rights to some of Pat Conroy’s backlist titles has been resolved and Open Road is going ahead with ebook release of the titles that they announced almost a year ago. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt spokesperson Lori Glazer tells the AP, “in this instance we negotiated an agreed-upon separation of print from electronic, to our mutual satisfaction.” Arthur Klebanoff at Rosetta Books, who had published an ebook version of The Prince of Tides, says: “Did I want to renew this license? The answer is ‘Yes.’ But until the arrival of the Kindle, you had a tiny, tiny marketplace. […]
More People and Notes
At Penguin USA, Jacqueline Fischetti has been appointed to the new position of director of content development, international. She will “spearhead the launch of an international expansion program that will introduce English-language books to the Latin American market, targeting adult and young adult readers who are at various stages of learning English.” She has been director of the Penguin Speakers Bureau since 2006, and joined Penguin Group in 1999. In yesterday’s piece on the book deal between the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and Little, Brown, the quote about the publisher being selected for “intangibles” comes from the commission’s vice chairman […]
Unusual Deal for Financial Crisis Report Gives Treasury An Advance and Royalties
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and its staff journalist Matt Cooper have made a deal with Little, Brown for “authorized” publication of their report about the 2008 collapse on December 15 in both print and digital versions. As is usually the case with government documents, the publisher’s version will compete with a free downloadable version available on government web sites. But everything else about the deal, which the commission announced in a terse statement last week, is less traditional. As the Washington Post writes, the government retained two agents–Will Lippincott at Lippincott Massie McQuilkin and Joe Spieler of the Spieler […]