Timed for the Comic Con in San Diego, even though it’s no more of a movie show than anything else, Abrams announced the title and cover of Jeff Kinney’s next book, DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: DOG DAYS. They will print 3 million copies for the October 12 laydown. Kinney says, “It takes Greg out of the school setting for the first time. It’s been a lot of fun to write about the Heffley summer vacation.” Abrams says they have over 20 million Wimpy Kid books in print in the US. Scholastic announced the acquisition of more graphic novels in […]
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Ever More Books: U. of Michigan to Offer 400,000 Books through BookSurge
Continuing our theme of the Content Explosion that will make literally millions of new books available in the marketplace (and make an even bigger hash of Bowker’s already flagging tracking of new ISBNs every year), the University of Michigan announced yesterday that they will make available “more than 400,000” public domain titles in print-on-demand versions. The nonexclusive two-year agreement is a partnership with BookSurge, which will offer the books via parent company Amazon. “The university will set the list price of each book. The agreement calls for a sharing of revenue between BookSurge and the university.” The university notes that […]
Bookselling: Target Is Timesworthy
Target’s ability to select and sell titles to its customers that may not be major bestsellers in traditional bookstores is the focus of an NYT feature, which says their Bookmarket club “has highlighted largely unknown writers.” Their picks are focused on trade paperback fiction, and include special designations such as a recent “Hand-Picked Titles From Emerging Authors.” Among the successful picks, which can sell 50,000 to 150,000 copies at Target alone, have been Michelle Richmond’s The Year of Fog, Meg Waite Clayton’s The Wednesday Sisters, Lisa Genova’s Still Alice, Diane Chamberlain’s The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes, and Tatiana de […]
Bookselling: Borders Focuses More Store Space On Teens with "Borders Ink"
Borders has created expanded sections within some Michigan superstores focused on teen shoppers, providing graphic novels, fantasy and young-adult books together along with non-book merchandise focused on teens, and expects to roll-out the concept throughout nearly all of their superstores nationwide in August. The new sections take advantage of space previously used to sell music and dvds.WSJ
People: BN Updates, and More
Two updates to last Friday’s story on changes at Barnes & Noble. Supply chain vp Bob Knowles reports to Jaime Carey, not Joe Gonnella. And to be clear, Barnes & Noble vp, book development Bruce Lubin is leaving on his own accord to work full-time with with his wife on their proprietary publishing company Castle Point Publishing, developing products for the home shopping network. Elsewhere, at Simon & Schuster Children’s, Natalie White has been promoted to director of advertising. At Melville House, Megan Halpern has joined the publisher as publicist, replacing Clara Heyworth, who has left the company. Halpern was […]
McGraw-Hill Drops Another 340 Education Jobs In Reorg
The latest in a series of reorganizations of McGraw-Hill’s textbook division sounds so happy that you could almost overlook the news that they are eliminating another 340 jobs from the unit, taking a pre-tax charge of $14 million. Those cuts follow two previous purges since early 2008 that already eliminated 455 jobs within the education line, still making this latest reduction the single largest of the three rounds of layoffs. The company’s announcement, however, simply focuses on “creating achievement-focused preK-12 education group to help students develop 21st century skills.” That new focus somehow accounts for most of the layoffs: “the […]