The latest acquisition in a busy year for M&A, Hachette UK has purchased illustrated reference book publisher Ilex and will make it part of Octopus. Alastair Campbell, who co-founded Ilex 15 years ago, is retiring from the company, but the rest of the publishing staff will be retained and transferred to London. The Bookseller says that Nielsen Bookscan shows Ilex as having sales of approximately £700,000 in 2013. Their specialty is books on photography and visual media. Octopus chief executive Alison Goff says in the announcement: “We have long-admired the Ilex list for its quality and creativity. The titles Ilex publish are essential reference […]
Marketing
Corporate: In-Flight eBooks on JetBlue; BN Commissions 500,000 Signed Books For Holidays; Perseus Year-End View
JetBlue’s has launched their “Fly-Fi” content platform, currently available on about 35 percent of all flights as part of their rollout of inflight wi-fi, offering free content, including excerpts of more than 20 ebooks from HarperCollins, their “exclusive book content partner” at launch. Penguin Random House will join the program in the first quarter of 2015. The ebook excerpts will include buy buttons to allow customers to purchase any of the available titles from a variety of retailers. HarperCollins chief marketing officer Angela Tribelli says in the announcement: “This is a terrific opportunity for travelers to enjoy some of the best books […]
Corporate: Reviving Scribner’s Magazine Online, Open Road Espanol, and Courier’s Brazilian Buy
The latest consumer-facing website launched by Simon & Schuster revives an old magazine name: Scribner Magazine, inspired by (but dropping the apostrophe of) the publisher’s long-ago sister publication Scribner’s Magazine, which published from 1887 through 1939. The new site will act as a general-interest literary magazine featuring “contributions from Scribner authors, editors, fellow S&S imprints, and other voices in the literary community.” Pieces already online includes an essay from Anthony Doerr on his new novel ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE, up for a National Book Award Wednesday night; rare Hemingway photos from the publication of Ernest Hemingway’s THE SUN […]
People, Etc.
Michelle Aielli has been named executive director of publicity for Hachette Books. She moves over from Little, Brown, where she was most recently publicity director. At Simon & Schuster, Jennifer Grojean has been promoted to director, national accounts for special markets, while Bianca Johnson moves up to manager, adult custom & proprietary sales. In addition, Alex Maurer has joined as manager, children’s custom & proprietary sales. Previously she was senior coordinator, custom & proprietary sales at Penguin. At HarperCollins Children’s, Nellie Kurtzman has joined as director of integrated marketing. Previously she was marketing director at Little, Brown Books for Young […]
Announcements: Microsoft Moves to Pearson; Amazon Publishing in Germany; and More
Microsoft Press will work with Pearson for global distribution of their print and ebooks as of April 1. They will also jointly launch microsoftpressstore.com the same month. Microsoft had been distributed by O’Reilly Media, as part of a broader strategic relationship between the two. Last September, Microsoft Press announced that they were taking back editorial and publishing functions for the business from O’Reilly but continuing to work with them on marketing, sales and distribution. Amazon Publishing is expanding their connection to the German market, led by publisher Sarah Tomashek and a Munich-based team, which is acquiring German-language fiction. The spring 2014 launch […]
DBW Survey Points to Author Dissatisfaction With Traditional and Self-Publishing
Having already offered a sneak peek at some of the results, CUNY professor Dana Beth Weinberg presented some additional data and analysis of the Digital Book World and Writer’s Digest author survey, which focused on the advantages and disadvantages of traditional publishing and self-publishing. While the survey pointed to some obvious conclusions — namely that “authors in general do not seem overly pleased with their publishing experiences, whether with traditional publishing or self-publishing — it offered up some interesting data points about preference, such as 24.1 percent of traditionally published surveyed authors being “very satisfied” with the pricing of their […]