Atticus Bookstore and Cafe (near Yale University) has caused a stir with a policy requiring employees to speak English only in public areas. “Spanish is allowed in the prep area, the dishwasher area and the lower level. Let’s make our customers feel welcome and comfortable,” a copy of the policy says. In a statement owner Charles Negaro said: “We encourage the use of English because it’s an appropriate way to be most helpful to our customers. To continue to provide the best service possible, we try to help those employees who speak English as a second language by helping them […]
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New Imprints: Grand Central Creates Life & Style, and Rejt Starts Pan Macmillan Line
Grand Central will fold its Springboard Press and Wellness Central lines into a newly-christened Grand Central Life & Style imprint, starting in fall 2010. They will publish eight to 12 titles a year across categories including style (beauty and fashion), food (cooking), body & mind (diet, fitness, self-help, and inspiration), home (organization, design, and green living) and connections (relationships, parenting and pets). Karen Murgolo continues to oversee this publishing, as editorial director of the new line. In the UK, Pan Macmillan publishing director Maria Rejt will run her own imprint, Mantle, which launches in May with Scott Turow’s new book. […]
eReading News
Kobo put out a press release this morning noting that as of next month their service will be available on “various tablet and slate computers,” which will present an “opportunity to deliver eBooks, newspapers, and magazines to readers on yet another screen that is well equipped for reading.” They are also working on support for Windows 7, Android, and other operating systems.Release Speaking of tablets, every news organization playing catch-up on the no-longer-secret Apple content acquisition talks is now required to come up with at least one name of company talking to the folks from Cupertino. So Bloomberg comes up […]
People
Dorchester has promoted Leah Hultenschmidt to editorial director, filling the position vacated held by Alicia Condon. In her ten years with the company, Hultenschmidt has directed the publicity and promotions department, has built and overseen the company’s website and has edited the romance and western genres. Kensington has promoted Alex Nicolajsen to digital marketing manager. She was the executive assistant to Steven Zacharius. At William Morrow, Tavia Kowalchuk has been promoted to senior marketing director. Also at Harper, note that the recently-announced Digital support divsion (and digital technology services group) have no effect on Harper Media, their digital publishing group. […]
Amazon Launches "Active Content" App Program
In the second big pre-tablet announcement this week from Amazon, the company has announced plans to allow the creation of the Kindle version apps, which they are calling “active content,” later this year. For now they are just inviting interested parties to register for a limited beta of the Kindle Developer Kit, which will be available for download sometime next month. Like Apple’s App Store model–and the new self-publishing Kindle royalty option announced yesterday–creators of active content will receive 70 percent of the revenue, minus delivery fees of 15 cents per megabyte. Small apps of less than 1 mb can […]
People
More promotions from the Random House publishing group: Junessa Viloria is now an assistant editor at Ballantine; Angela Polidoro is an assistant editor at Bantam; Randall Klein moves up to associate editor at Bantam Dell; and Jessica Sebor is now an assistant editor at Bantam Dell. To clarify yesterday’s report on changes at Harper UK, Lynne Drew will oversee all of the programs within the Harper Fiction division–but not any of the Harper Press fiction lines.