The Quality Paperback Book Club’s New Voices Award went to Paolo Giordano for his novel THE SOLITUDE OF PRIME NUMBERS, and their New Visions Award went to Lisa Miller for HEAVEN. In the UK, The Bookseller Industry Awards were presented last night. The sponsor-laced award names can be a little embarrassing–Quercus is technically the “Bonnier Publishing Publisher of the Year”–so we’ll just present a few shorthanded highlights: Faber & Faber won both Independent Publisher of the Year and the Innovation Prize (for the Touch Press app of The Solar System) Clara Farmer at Chatto & Windus won Imprint and Editor […]
International News
Waterstone’s Sale Nears, In Messy Process
HMV is making the same mess out of a Waterstone’s sale that they have made out of the booksellers’ neverending “turnaround.” The fundamental problem is threefold: They spent a while pretending the bookseller wasn’t for sale when it obviously was; they are selling at the worst time ever to sell an English-language book chain; and they have had unrealistic price expectations for the current market. Making it worse, HMV needs to raise enough cash to satisfy their lenders since they are in violation of their banking convenants, but the Waterstone’s proceeds will not be sufficient by themselves. The latest update […]
Lonely Planet to Move Web Operations to UK, Cut 70 Jobs
Lonely Planet announced to Melbourne staff Thursday that it will shift the bulk of its web operations to the company’s UK offices and slash costs by 18 percent, cutting 70 jobs in the process. The company said the move was due to a strengthening Australian dollar and declining sales. “Despite the fact that we’ve delivered on everything we set out to achieve this past year, the devastating impact of foreign currency exchange shaved over $13 million off our 2010/11 revenues. And at the moment, we have more than 80 per cent of our revenues coming from outside of Australia & New […]
Lagardere Sales Slide As US eBooks Hit 22%, Plus UK Digital Stats and Asian Device Updates
Today’s stories offer digital statistics and hints from all over. Lagardere issued a brief first quarter trading update. Publishing revenues were 390 million euros, down 9.8 percent on an absolute basis, and down 10.4 percent from a year ago on a like-for-like basis. Once again, they attribute the drop to Stephenie Meyer’s declining sales. (The same period a year ago “notably” included Meyer rights sales as well.) eBooks comprised approximately 22 percent of sales in the US in the quarter through the end of March, and grew to 5 percent of sales in the UK. For the full year, they […]
Kindle Launches German Store With Over 25K German Titles; Apple Sells Another 4.7 Million iPads
As long expected, Amazon announced today the launch of their first non-English Kindle store, debuting in Germany with “over 25,000 German-language titles,” including “71 of 100 Spiegel bestsellers” and “thousands of German classics downloadable for free.” The store appers to have lots of English-language titles for German customers as well, since the company says the store has over 650,000 titles in total. When the German Publishers and Booksellers Association launched their own ebookstore last November through Libreka.de, they also began with approximately 25,000 German-language ebooks for sale (which is still the count displayed on the site). Amazon says their title […]
People, Etc.
Kelly Fischbach has joined Barnes & Noble as director, digital education content for BN.com (NookStudy). Fischbach was formerly director, content product management for Kno. Allison Dobson has moved in-house to the Random House Publishing Group as vp, director, business development and strategic partnerships, reporting to Bill Takes. In the UK Mark Hutchinson, formerly of Colman Getty, is setting up a pr and management consulting company, Mark Hutchinson Management. The Bookseller says he will handle personal PR for JK Rowling through the new company, as well as working for authors including Nigella Lawson and Andrea Levy.Bookseller In Canada, Thomas Allen & […]