In the announcement, editor Jason Kaufman says: “Dan’s new novel is largely set in Washington, D.C., though it’s a Washington few will recognize. As we would expect, he pulls back the veil– revealing an unseen world of mysticism, secret societies, and hidden locations, with a stunning twist that long predates America.” (The UK version is on the left; the US version on the right.)
Free
Bookselling News: Trover Closes; Half Price Rises; What Scribd Does Right
Washington, DC’s Trover Shop bookstore on Capitol Hill is closing after 51 years in business. At one point comprising five stores in the area, Trover Shops will be left with a single outlet that sells only cards and gifts. Co-owner Andy Shuman (and son of founder Joe Shuman) tells the Washington Post, “We don’t want to see it go, but unfortunately with the way the industry’s going and other stores closing, we’d rather be on our own terms than someone else’s terms.” They wanted to be able to “walk away with our heads held high instead of with our heads […]
Bloomsbury's Next Purchase: Academic Publisher Tottel
Bloomsbury’s latest strategic acquisition is professional and academic publisher Tottel, based in the UK and Ireland, to be bought for 9.96 million pounds. They will rename the unit Bloomsbury Professional. In the fiscal year ending in February, Tottel had sales of 6.25 million pounds, operating profit of 0.93 million pounds, and EBITDA of 1.19 million pounds. The company says: “Bloomsbury has identified academic and professional publishing as a growing niche sector. The proposed acquisition of Tottel fulfils a strategic objective of Bloomsbury in pursuing opportunities in this market and follows from the acquisitions of Methuen, Berg Publishers, and The Arden […]
People
Riccardo Cavellero is leaving Random House’s Spanish-language joint venture Random House Mondadori after eights years as ceo at the end of this year. Next January he will become general manager of Mondadori’s trade-book business worldwide, based in Milan. Markus Dohle and Mondadori ceo Maurizio Costa write that “we are committed to appointing a new ceo who will build upon our strengths as print-book publishers and also will lead us to become the No. 1 Spanish-language digital-book publisher. Kate Travers has joined powerHouse Books as marketing director. Most recently she was strategic marketing director at the Literary Ventures Fund and marketing […]
People: Weisbach Gets Three New Associates
Rob Weisbach Creative Management announced a relationship with three new senior associates, Erin Cox, David Groff, and Jake Bauman, who are becoming part of the company’s “virtual team.” (They work collaboratively–“operating independently but in collaboration”–though not from the same physical office space.) Cox will represent authors, offer publicity expertise, and provide publicity and promotion services for outside clients, and work with corporate clients including Conde Nast Digital and the Frankfurt Book Fair. She was most recently book publishing director at the New Yorker. Independent editor Groff will develop a client list and provide editorial guidance, while offering editorial services to […]
Free Indeed; Anderson's New Book Lifts Numerous Passages from Wikipedia
The Virginia Quarterly Review convincingly reproduces a number of incidences in Chris Anderson’s new book FREE: The Future of a Radical Price that reproduce nearly verbatim portions of a number of Wikipedia articles. Anderson admits fault via e-mail, saying “all those are my screwups after we decided not to run notes as planned, due to my inability to find a good citation format for web sources.” He intended to “do a write-through” of “source material without an individual author to credit (as in the case of Wikipedia),” and says that “obviously in my rush at the end I missed a […]