Abrams’ Amulet imprint has announced the fifth volume of Jeff Kinney’s bestselling Wimpy Kid series for a November 9 national laydown. The title won’t be revealed until July, but they have confirmed purple as the color of the new book’s cover. Kinney will sign in the Abrams booth at 11 on Thursday at BEA, and they are giving away wimpy water bottles and bookmarks. Kinney says the new book “is about change and the different ways Greg and his best friend, Rowley, deal with it. To me, this book is the lynchpin in the series, and I’m excited to be […]
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eNews from the Publishers: Ballantine and Harlequin Try Digital Shorts that Connect to Longer Works; Sesame Street eBookstore Opens with Subscription plan
Ballantine will publish a 6,000-word digital short story from Steve Berry in September for $1.99 that bridges to his November 23 book release THE EMPEROR’S TOMB. The WSJ calls it “a literary appetizer, inexpensive enough to attract potential readers who might otherwise not be willing to buy a new novel from an author whose works they haven’t yet read.” Matt Schwartz at Random House says, “realistically, it would be hard to get something like this in print. But the e-book format is very flexible. What this does is offer an affordable entry point into Steve’s world.” In the press release, […]
People, Etc.
Liz Johnson is joining Thomas Nelson as the marketing specialist for the Max Lucado branding team. She worked in publicity for WaterBrook Multnomah for four years. NBN has taken over sales, marketing and distribution for city travel guide publisher Not For Tourists. They had been distributed by Langenscheidt.
Everything BEA
Today’s news bulletin is that Oprah Magazine editor-at-large Gayle King has been enlisted to interview Barbra Streisand in Tuesday night’s keynote reception. App-ly Now<img align=”right” src=http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/lunch/icon.png width=”80″ border=”0″ alt=””>We’ve had a lot of enthusiastic reactions to yesterday’s launch of our handy, feature-packed convention mobile web app, Publishers Lunch: BEA To Go. Load it into your mobile phone so you’ll be all set next week. Plus, I think you’ll find that our customized slicing of the complex BEA schedule makes it easier to plan your show time now than burrowing through the official BEA site. We’ve separated out the Main Events, […]
UK's PFD Sold Again, to Talent Manager Backed by Matthew Freud
Beleaguered, once-proud UK agency PFD has been sold again, this time to agent Michael Foster, who will merge it with his three-person company MF Management and rename it The Rights House. (Foster’s founding investor, and the largest non-executive shareholder of the newly merged agency, is UK PR maven and son-in-law of Rupert Murdoch, Matthew Freud.) As a result, ten of the agency’s 32 staffers are reportedly going to lose their jobs. Caroline Michel, who was hired as chief executive of PFD in 2007 after previous management rebuffed efforts by core longtime agents to buy back the agency, remains as a […]
New Ventures: Bloomsbury Australia, Night Shade's New Imprint, and More
In a non-specific first quarter trading update–generally used to assure investors that everything is great–Bloomsbury announced that they will launch their own Australian division in January 2011. Current marketing director of Bloomsbury UK Kathleen Farrar will be managing director of the new unit. Their longtime Australian distributor Allen & Unwin will provide sales and distribution services to the new company. Update Sc-fi/horror publisher Night Shade Books is launching Pugilist Press, focused on “contemporary literary fiction with an edge.” Juliet Ulman is editor-in-chief of the new line, with Night Shade founder Jason Williams as publisher. Ulman had been at Bantam Dell […]