Hachette Australia and New Zealand chairman Malcolm Edwards announced that as part of a restructuring the company will close its New Zealand office at the end of 2013 and eliminate 15 jobs, including those of managing director Kevin Chapman, editorial director Warren Adler, and financial controller Rick Groufsky. Going forward Hachette New Zealand will now focus only on marketing and sales of international titles and the New Zealand backlist. In his statement Edwards said the restructuring was due to rapid ebook growth as well as the increased buying of books from overseas “at the expense of the local trade.” HarperCollins […]
International News
Legal: Penguin Finalizes EU Settlement: Minnesota Settles with Agency Five
The European Commission formally accepted Penguin’s December 2012 settlement on ebook pricing, which essentially follows the Department of Justice settlement conditions and mirrors the “commitments” already made in Europe by the other four settling publishers and Apple. The Commission said in a statement that “after a market test” it “is satisfied that the commitments offered by Penguin remedy the competition concerns it had identified.” (Our standard reminder: The European settlement only affects countries that allow the discounting of ebooks in the first place — so it applies principally to the UK.) Separately, with the final state settlements with Penguin and […]
Names from the UK — For Booker Candidates
While many are waiting on the name of the Prince of Cambridge, the UK’s Booker Prize released a list of 13 names — their longlist of possible contenders for this year’s award. The real list of nominees will be issued September 10. The longlist of 13 titles is mainly useful to help publishers prepare to adjust publication dates, since 5 of the books have not been published at all yet in the UK (only 6 are out in the US). And it can lay the groundwork for rights sales (or intracorporate publication arrangements), since four titles appear to have no […]
eNews: Google Play in 9 More Countries; BookVibe’s Tweet-Based Recommendations; And More
Google Play has expanded into nine more European countries, including Denmark, Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, and Sweden, bringing the total to 26. The NYT’s Bits Blog writes up its impressions of BookVibe, a book recommendation service created by fledgling startup Parakweet that “basically analyzes the tweets of accounts that you follow on Twitter and compiles a list of book recommendations based on which titles those people are talking about.” (BookVibe emerged out of BEA’s Publishing Hackathon earlier this summer.) Parakweet recently raised $2 million in seed funding for this and other services (including TrendFinder, for movie […]
BEA to Highlight Translations In 2014
Instead of focusing on a single country, BEA’s “Global Market Forum” for 2014 will devote itself to Books In Translation. They will convene what they are calling a “world summit on translation” on May 28 (the conference day before the show floor opens), followed by programs at BEA and around New York. A variety of partners will join BEA in developing the related professional and cultural programs, including: The Literary Translation at Columbia Writing Program, PEN World Voices, Open Letter Press, the Association of Author Representatives, American Literary Translators Association, and Art of Translation in San Francisco.
Lonely Planet Plans Broad Layoffs In “Challenging” Market
Lonely Planet announced layoffs internally, called “a series of changes to its operations in response to a challenging external environment and to position the company for continued success.” They warned that “a number of positions at our offices around the world have the potential to be affected and we are in consultation with individuals whose roles may be impacted.” Australian media accounts estimated the layoffs at 80 to 100 jobs, mostly in Australia, but COO Daniel Houghton appears to have “confirmed around 70- 80 roles would be made redundant worldwide” to the Sydney Morning Herald. Houghton told Skift.com, which first […]