As announced in May, Bloomsbury has launched their digital and POD imprint for out-of-print works, Bloomsbury Reader. Called a “digital global publisher,” their initial list of roughly 560 books focuses on authors and estates represented by their “founder partner” PFD/The Rights House, though they continue to invite the participation of other estates and agencies. Ingram has a new partnership with logistics company SBS Worldwide to provide their client publishers with greater supply chain visibility on their titles. The two companies will “also consolidate on major freight lanes and offer competitive rates on global transportation.” Kobo announced a new update to […]
International News
The Next Question on Assange Autobiography
After all of last week’s media attention–and ethical questions–over Canongate’s publication of their Julian Assange book against the author’s wishes, driven by the publisher’s admitted “financial imperative,” the serial fees from the Independent may turn out to be among the title’s leading sources of income. After its first three days on-sale, BookScan UK reports the book has sold just 644 copies, making it the 50th bestselling hardcover and the 537th bestselling book overall for that week. At Amazon UK the printed book (ranked 681) and the Kindle edition (ranked 1,176) continue to slide. That reception may also influence international publishers […]
Sorting the Guardian’s Books Power 100
The Guardian published their latest list of whom they view as the 100 most powerful people in the UK book industry. We thought it was more interesting to sort their list according to categories (and we left aside authors, broadcasters, and a few other non-trade people). Needless to say, the Guardian still views critics as wielding a lot of influence–while agents look quite low in their estimation: Bookselling 1 Jeff Bezos Founder and CEO of Amazon 4 James Daunt/Alexander Mamut MD, Waterstones/Proprietor, Waterstones 7 Kate Swann CEO, WH Smith 12 Rachel Harcourt and […]
Assange Says Canongate Is “Profiteering” from “Unfinished Draft”
Julian Assange issued a lengthy statement via WikiLeaks last night, saying that Canongate’s publication Thursday of the early draft of his book over his objections is “old-fashioned opportunism and duplicity — screwing people over to make a buck.” He says the house is “profiteering from an unfinished and erroneous draft.” Assange says the manuscript that became the basis of publication–which Canongate has acknowledged was a first draft–is rather “a narrative and literary interpretation of a conversation between the writer [Andrew O’Hagan] and me.” Assange says it was never submitted to the house at all; instead, he says O’Hagan’s researcher provided […]
People, Etc.:
At this morning’s BISG annual meeting, the organization confirmed that vice chair Ken Michaels is now serving as co-chair of the organization’s board, alongside Dominique Raccah, who will step down from her position in a year. (Raccah took over as sole chair of the board last November when co-chair Andrew Weber left Random House.) Little, Brown, John Parsley has been promoted to executive editor. He joined the company in the fall of 2007. David Moldawer has joined Amazon Publishing as senior editor for the New York-based trade group, run by Larry Kirshbaum. Previously he was a senior editor at McGraw-Hill. At […]
eNews: Amazon Spain, Local Kindle Ads, Estimates of 5.4 Million eReaders in Q2, and More
As expected, Amazon.es launched yesterday with a press conference in Madrid featuring vp for Europe Greg Greely (in English). Greely announced the company offers 2.5 million print books in Spanish and 80,000 in Catalan, which because of the fixed price laws they can sell at a maximum discount of 5 percent. Orders from Spain will be served from a warehouse in a secret location outside Spain–just as Amazon.es’s 100 employees (many of whom joined Amazon as part of the BuyVIP acquisition last year) are not in Spain either, working out of the company’s European headquarters in Luxembourg. Regarding the reported […]