Hachette Book Group issued a new statement Friday evening in the wake of Amazon’s removal of pre-order capabilities on forthcoming Hachette titles, which itself stemmed from an ongoing dispute over terms. “We are determined to protect the value of our authors’ books and our own work in editing, distributing, and marketing them,” the publisher said. They add, “We hope this difficult situation will not last a long time, but we are sparing no effort and exploring all options.” But the company is not prepared to say what those options might include yet. Separately, the NYT is last on the beat in […]
International News
FT’s Business Book Prize Teams with McKinsey
Known until now as the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award, in its tenth year the newspaper has a new partner for the £30,000 award in McKinsey & Company. McKinsey partner and director of publishing Rik Kirkland will serve as one of the judges, the two are adding a second award, the Bracken Bower Prize, given to “a promising young writer with the best proposal for a book about an emerging business theme.” The winner will receive £15,000 and their proposal will be published on FT.com. Among the four judges for the new prize is Penguin Random House […]
Smashwords Pairs with OverDrive, txtr
Smashwords announced two deals this week: 200,000 of their titles will be available for sale to libraries worldwide through OverDrive. To make things easier for librarians, the two are also “creating curated lists of Smashwords bestsellers and popular genres,” offering for sale collections of the top 100, 500 or 1,000 bestselling Smashwords authors. Separately, 250,000 Smashwords ebooks will become part of txtr’s international ebook catalog.
People, Etc.
Sandy McCormick Hill has left her position as ebook rights, contract manager, at Harper Collins. She can be reached at smchill@gmail.com. Simone Garzella Literary Scouting has been appointed US literary scout for the Lira Publishing Group in Hungary. Correcting from Friday, Liesa Abrams‘ new title is associate editorial director of Aladdin and Pulse. Linda Leavell‘s HOLDING UP UPSIDE DOWN: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore won the Biographers International Organization’s Plutarch Award for the best biography. The closing in April 2015 of the California Princeton Fulfillment Services in Ewing, NJ that we reported on Friday — part of the […]
International: Paragon Acquires Bankrupt Weltbild; Amazon Partners With Italian Bookstore Chain Giunti
German media group Weltbild, which went into bankruptcy reorganization last January, has been acquired by private equity group Paragon, Manager Magazin reports. As part of the deal, for which terms were not disclosed, Paragon will take a majority stake in Weltbild and transfer the main business in Germany as well as satellite operations in Austria and Switzerland to a new company. Since the bankruptcy, 900 of Weltbild’s employees (nearly 50 percent of the workforce) have lost their jobs and 50 of 220 stores have closed. Amazon has partnered with Italian bookstore chain Giunti, which will allow the bookseller to sell […]
People, Etc.
Associate publisher Tracy Locke will leave the Penguin Press on May 16. Thereafter, she can be reached at locketracy32@gmail.com. Jessica Purcell has joined Knopf as associate director of publicity. Previously she was a publicity manager at Norton. At HarperAudio, Sean McManus was promoted to senior director. In addition, Caitlin Garing moves up to senior producer and Erin Wicks has been promoted to producer. The Elina Ahlback Literary Agency, based in Helsinki and focused on representing Finnish authors, illustrators and publishers to the US market, has recently opened an office in New York, headed by Laura Palotie. She is based out of Makeshift […]