The European Commission has approved a deal under which Bertelsmann’s Circulo de Lectores book club in Spain will now be controlled jointly by the German media group and Spain’s Planeta.Dow Jones The LAT had an interesting feature on Scholastic‘s efforts to translate select books from their list into Arabic. “Over the last three years, almost 17 million copies have been shipped from a plant in Missouri to elementary schools across the Middle East and North Africa. The State Department “paid for translations through a democracy-building initiative and for printing about half the books.” Scholastic vp Carol Sakoian says, “arents in […]
International News
Numbers: Eclipse Opening, European Orphan Books
The Wednesday opening of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse took in $68.5 million at the box office–a record for a Wednesday debut, though slightly shy of New Moon’s opening of $72.7, though that come on a Friday.HR A report from the European Commission estimates that the Europe has over 3 million in-copyright orphan books, though it’s a rough calculation. “There are approximately 600,000 orphan works in the UK. Based on the same key factors extrapolated to the rest of the Member States, the number of orphan books in EU would be about 3 million.” As they note, in Europe there is […]
eNews: iBookstore for Canada, SuperKindle Flies Higher, and More
Canada’s iBookstore went live with paid books yesterday according to users (or today according to other official announcements). This morning Simon & Schuster Canada and Hachette Book Group both announced that they are among publishers now selling through the store, and Harper Canada has confirmed to us they are live in the store as well. Today Amazon announced they are taking pre-orders for a new version of the SuperKindle, shipping as of July 7. The new model is priced at $379 (compared to $479 for the original model), and is said to have “an all new, high contrast electronic ink […]
Occasions: Westhampton Store Opens, Bertelsmann’s Anniversary
Books and Books Westhamtpon Beach has their official opening today, on schedule.Site Today is the 175th anniversary of the founding of C. Bertelsmann Verlag in Guttersloh, Germany.Billboard
Waterstone's Sales Decline 6.3% for the Year. As Profit Evaporates
Waterstone’s parent HMV reported good sales for the overall group for fiscal 2009, reaching a new high of 2.017 billion pounds, though “the one area of disappointment was in the financial performance” of the bookselling unit. At 513.6 million pounds for the year, Waterstone’s sales fell 6.3 percent, as operating profit was just 2.8 million pounds, a significant decline from 10 million pounds a year ago. The company says that their previously-announced new strategic plan “is already beginning to have a positive impact.” On their controversial new distribution center, they say “it is clear that the implementation…also adversely impacted performance […]
Abrams and Chronicle In Joint Venture to Sell and Market in UK and Europe
Abrams and Chronicle are announcing a UK joint venture in which the UK sales and marketing group Abrams has run since 2004 is expanding to handle both titles from both companies. Called Abrams & Chronicle Books, under managing director Chuck Lang the unit will have a staff of 11 sales and marketing professionals. In addition to the Abrams and Chronicle lists, the company will continue to distribute “a select group of US and international publishers” and recruit “new complementary” clients. New international sales director David Gooding and eight export reps will handle sales and distribution throughout Europe, “where the new […]