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 […]
International News
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 […]
People, Etc.
Joerg Pfuhl “has decided to leave” his position as ceo of Random House Germany (and member of the Random House executive board) at the end of this year. He first joined Bertelsmann in 1994. Company ceo Markus Dohle says Pfuhl told him “he wanted to devote more time to his family and to his interests in education, consulting, and philanthropic work and give them the same undivided focus he has given the company.” The German unit’s chief operating officer since 2005 Frank Sambeth will take over as ceo January 1. Vintage senior editor Jennifer Jackson has been named senior editor, Knopf and Doubleday. […]
People, Etc.
Ami Greko from Kobo, Liz Scheier from Barnes & Noble, and Christina Biamonte Faubert from Sony eBooks, will join the advisory board of the Publishing Innovation Awards–the expanded program of honors presented at Digital Book World. This year the initiative is also adding the QED Seal, “a reader-focused standard for ebook quality.” Kobo, BN and Sony have all joined the program as “supporting partners” as well. Further to yesterday’s news of Richard Nash‘s new job at start-up Small Demons, he notes on blog that his RedLemona.de venture is becoming “a fully volunteer-operated enterprise.” He tells us it will “continue as […]