Danielle Perez is joining New American Library as executive editor, where she will acquire commercial fiction and nonfiction, starting January 4. Perez has been at Bantam for 11 years. Michelle Brower is joining Folio Literary Management as an agent, after five years with Wendy Sherman Associates. Kristin Lang has joined Audible as director of editorial business development. managing the growing fiction publishing program and developing and acquiring new and innovative audio projects. She was editorial director at Macmillan Audio, overseeing the selection and acquisition of over 100 titles annually. Tangentially, Moby Lives speculates on a number of potential candidates for […]
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Bookselling: Shirky's Advice to Indie, and More
Clay Shirky wrote interestingly, if at excessive length about local bookstores and what they might need to do in order to survive and prosper. You can skip a big chunk of the first part of the essay… The crux is “the local bookstore creates all kinds of value for its community, whether its providing community bulletin boards, putting rocking chairs in the kids section, hosting book readings, or putting benches out in front of the store. Local writers, harried parents, couples on dates, all get value from a store’s existence as a inviting physical location, value separate from its existence […]
Graphic Arts Will Liquidate
Graphic Arts Center Publishing filed for liquidation in a Portland, OR federal bankruptcy court last Friday. The filing says that sales fell from $10.3 million in 2008 to $5.1 million for the first eight months of 2009. Last year’s sales were helped by their distribution relationship with Epicenter Press, which published Kaylene Johnson’s biography of Sarah Palin. Former board member and bookseller Michael Powell tells the Oregonian, “They’re having a hard time like everyone else. They did every cost cutting thing they could do.” The two largest creditors listed were Ingram, which give the publisher a $1.5 million loan, and […]
Harlequin Adds Self-Publishing Line
Following the same model as Thomas Nelson’s recently-announced WestBow Press, Harlequin has started a self-publishing line. Like Nelson, they are outsourcing most of the work to Author Solutions as their partner. Unlike Nelson, they aren’t afraid to use their own name for the line, which is called Harlequin Horizons. As they say on the site: “The intent behind creating Harlequin Horizons is to give more aspiring romance writers and women’s fiction writers the opportunity to publish their books and achieve their dreams without going through the submission process with a traditional publishing house. “However, we understand you may aspire to […]
AP Reads Palin
The embargo on the Sarah Palin book was broken easily as the AP purchased an early copy yesterday. Among her claims that they cite: “Palin bitterly details how she was prevented from delivering a concession speech on election night, how she’d been kept “bottled up” from reporters during the campaign and prevented in many ways from just being herself. She also contends she was prepped to give non-answers during her debate with Joe Biden.” She calls Katie Couric “badgering” and “contends the anchor chose ‘gotcha’ moments while leaving the candidate’s more substantive remarks on the cutting room floor.” Also, “Palin […]
Tracking the Takeoff of Twilight
Another round of Twilight interest is building with the release next Friday of the movie version of New Moon, and a rare appearance on Oprah today by author Stephenie Meyer. Time looks to chart the takeoff portion of Meyer’s career. Publisher Megan Tingley recalls when the book was published in fall 2005, “All the signs were there, but at the beginning they were modest. The sales kept getting a little higher each week. It wasn’t a gigantic phenomenon overnight — I think people think that now, but it wasn’t.” A year later, New Moon launched with a slightly higher print […]