Former svp and executive director of publicity and public relations at the Bantam Dell Publishing Group Barb Burg has launched a new company, barb burg ink, offering publicity, public relations, media training, media placement, publishing strategy and brand management services. Endeavor agents Kirby Kim and Rebecca Oliver and subrights manager Laura Bonner will join the merged WME Entertainment, according to the Observer. Australian author Christos Tsiolkas won the overall Commonwealth Writers’ Award for best book for THE SLAP, “about middle-class suburban Australia and its notions of child-rearing and acceptable behavior.” Pakistani author Mohammed Hanif won the best first book award […]
Free
BN Finally Launches a Competitor to Audible
Barnes & Noble.com has launched an online mp3 audiobook, offering over 10,000 titles at an “average price” of $10 to $20 per download. A launch promotion offers nine free titles, including: The Babysitter’s Code by Laura Lippman, Great Day by Kurt Vonnegut, Super Goat Man by Jonathan Lethem, Best New Horror by Joe Hill, Fathers by Alice Munro, Truth or Dare by Elizabeth Berg, Ysrael by Junot Diaz, and Merrano of the Dry Country by Louis L’Amore. EVP of e-commerce Tom Burke calls it “a natural progression in our commitment to book lovers and audiobook fans.” Overdrive is maintaining and […]
Proposals: Boyle On, Brangelina Bodyguard Off
Crain’s reports that Richard Pine at Inkwell Management in the US and Mark Lucas to Lucas Alexander Whitley in the UK are auctioning a book by amateur singing sensation Susan Boyle. (The agents did not respond to queries from Crain’s.)Crains (if you click through from Google News you won’t get stopped at the reg wall) Celebrity bodyguard Mickey Brett’s book proposal about a variety of famous clients, including Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, makes its way to the NY Daily News, though the book itself will not find its way to store shelves. After legal threats to block any publication, […]
LAT Festival: Prizes, and Wind Damage
The Los Angeles Times kicked off their weekend festival of books with the naming of their annual book prize winners, which included: Fiction: Marilynne Robinson, HOMEFirst Fiction: Zoe Ferraris, FINDING NOUFYoung Adult: Terry Pratchett, NATIONCurrent Interest: Barton Gellman, ANGLER: The Cheney Vice Presidency Though this year’s awards presentation was downsized to the newspaper’s offices and not open to the public, LA Observed says “LAT publisher Eddy Hartenstein pledged publicly that the Times Book Prizes would continue next year, and at least some judges were already asked to return.” On Saturday afternoon, heavy winds knocked down a scaffolding on the UCLA […]
PM Reports Record Traffic In Q1
We’ve been busy reporting everyone else’s quarterly numbers, so we thought we would share a few of our own. Most notably, Publishers Marketplace has been hitting all-time high traffic numbers for the entire quarter. For March our true page views (leaving out hundreds of thousands of views from search engines, spiders, etc.) were over 1.2 million–with both page views and unique visitors up 32.5 percent over a year ago. And traffic was building throughout the quarter; up 12 percent in January, and 16 percent in February, and 20 percent overall for the quarter. We think a lot of it is […]
ABA Stays the Course Naming Teicher New CEO
The ABA has picked longtime chief operating officer Oren Teicher to succeed Avin Domnitz as the organization’s CEO. President Gayle Shanks writes to members, “His encyclopedic knowledge of everything associated with ABA’s past and current programs, coupled with his thoughtful and insightful analysis of how ABA can meet our future challenges, combined to make him our clear choice.” Shanks also notes that “as recommended several years ago by our Governance Review Committee, details surrounding the new CEO contract will be made available to the membership after they are finalized. The Board wants to assure the membership that the terms of […]