Following Faber and Faber’s termination of their US publishing partnership with FSG in February, the company has announced plans to launch their directly-published new US line in spring 2016, distributed by PGW. Faber intends to publish 60 new titles a year in the US, along with issuing a backlist of over 1,000 titles. The company will “hire dedicated marketing and publicity resources” to support the new program, co-locating those new hires with the Perseus Books Group. Faber ceo Stephen Page says in the announcement, “What we are building is a marketing and selling model for publishers with no editorial resource […]
International News
New Ventures: Chronicle Books Japan; AP eBooks
Chronicle Books has partnered with Top Partners Co, Ltd to launch Chronicle Books Japan. The new entity will be the exclusive distributor of Chronicle Books products in the Japanese market, including English language books, stationery and gifts as well as Japanese language editions, and will also establish branded boutiques in a number of flagship Tsutaya Mega bookstores throughout Japan starting in May and continuing through the end of 2016. “We were looking for the next wave of publishing culture,” Top Partners ceo Kazuo Nakanishi said in the announcement. “Chronicle Books is exactly what we have long admired and are looking […]
German Giant Media-Saturn Looks to Build On Bankrupt Txtr
Some publishers were recently informed via email that Germany’s txtr, which filed for bankruptcy in late January, will be adopted as the ebook platform for the big consumer electronics retailing group Media-Saturn-Holding as of the beginning of April. (Described as the Best Buy of Germany and/or Europe, the group’s Media Markt, Saturn and Redcoon stores have annual sales of over 20 billion euros.) It’s a logical marriage of convenience, in that txtr was already working with MSH on their ebook plans. MSH is currently working to turn JUKE! — an established streaming music subscription service — into a much broader digital […]
With First Full Penguin Random House Annual Results, Dohle Says “We Are Stronger Together”
Bertelsmann reported financial results for 2014 on Tuesday morning, providing the first look at a full year’s worth of performance for the merged Penguin Random House. (A year ago, the 2013 report incorporated only six months worth of Penguin’s sales.) The trade publishing giant had combined sales of €3.324 billion for the year, including Random House Germany, which is still owned entirely by Bertelsmann outside of the PRH joint venture. Operating EBITDA rose in line with sales, to €452 million, “driven by numerous major bestsellers, especially in the field of children’s books, as well as tie-ins to popular movies and TV series and […]
People, Etc.
Nadea Mina has joined Open Road Integrated Media as senior publicist. Previously she was a senior publicist at St. Martin’s Press. Yulia Borodyanskaya will join ABRAMS on March 25 as director, subsidiary & international rights. Previously she was director, international rights at McGraw-Hill Education. Eric Smith has joined P.S. Literary Agency as an associate agent. He was previously the social media & marketing manager at Quirk Books. Andrew Nurnberg Associates is partnering with Istanbul-based AnatoliaLit Agency, co-founded by Amy Spangler & Dilek Akdemir in 2005, as of April 1. In explaining the new partnership Nurnberg said in the announcement: “I’ve […]
Awards: Sharma Wins Folio; Booker International Shortlist; and More
Akhil Sharma has won the Folio Prize for his novel FAMILY LIFE (Norton). In announcing the $60,000 prize, chair of the judging committee William Fiennes commented: “From a shortlist of which we are enormously proud, Akhil Sharma’s lucid, compassionate, quietly funny account of one family’s life across continents and cultures, emerged as our winner. ‘Family Life’ is a masterful novel of distilled complexity: about catastrophe and survival; attachment and independence; the tension between selfishness and responsibility. We loved its deceptive simplicity and rare warmth. More than a decade in the writing, this is a work of art that expands with […]