Amazon is delighted to declare “strong customer adoption” of the Kindle Owners Lending Library and oodles of money for participating Kindle Select (e.g. Kindle-exclusive) self-published authors. Interestingly, however, the extra money that Amazon claims participants received–“an incremental 26 percent in December”–is roughly equal to the proclaimed market share of No. 2 ebook player Nook, where Select authors and publishers can no longer sell. Which begs the question of whether participants are actually making more money in toto. Even the top 10 authors–whom Amazon says earned over $70,000–only got a 30 percent boost over their ebook sales with their lending library […]
New Releases/Forthcoming
Nancy Pearl Partners With Amazon For ‘Book Lust Rediscoveries’ Series
Amazon announced Wednesday morning that noted former librarian and frequent NPR contributor Nancy Pearl will launch a new curated line under the Book Lust Rediscoveries banner, reissuing out-of-print books originally published between 1960 and 2000 that Pearl had previously recommended in her title Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment and Reason. Part of the Amazon Encore imprint, the series will republish up to six titles a year in digital, paperback and audiobook editions starting in April with Merle Miller’s A GAY AND MELANCHOLY SOUND (originally published in 1961) and then in June with Rhian Ellis’s AFTER LIFE (originally […]
Rachael Ray Moves to Atria; Gets Imprint (and QR Codes)
Following Reader’s Digest’s sale of the magazine Every Day With Rachael Ray to Meredith last October, the cooking personality is moving publishing houses as well, signing with Atria after nine books with Clarkson Potter. (Ray was originally published by Lake Isle Press.) Ray tells the WSJ she wants to make her new cookbooks “exciting for people using their Nooks or iPads” and says she was attracted by a Tom Watson golf book Atria published last year that used QR codes editorially to link to instructional videos. (Yes, this is the first known example of QR codes actually benefiting a publisher.) […]
Article Questions Existing and Forthcoming Books On Marine Hero’s Acts
McClatchy Newspapers reporter Jonathan Landay has published a lengthy investigation challenging the accuracy of both the 2011 book THE WRONG WAR by Bing West, as well as the official account of the heroism that led to Marine Dakota Meyer recently receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor. Last month, Random House announced a deal with Meyer–the first living Marine to receive the presitigious honor in almost 40 years–and co-author West, promising his “eyewitness account of the battle.” Landway, who was present as an embedded reporter at the battle in Ganjgal, Afghanistan which was the setting of Meyer’s heroism, writes that “crucial […]
People, Etc.
Stacy Cantor Abrams moves to romance publisher Entangled as of January 3, oversee all acquisitions. She has been at Bloomsbury’s Walker Children’s Books unit. At Berrett-Koehler, Neal Maillet has been promoted to editorial director. He will continue to acquire titles in the areas of business, leadership, current affairs, and personal development. Tom Bouman has joined Orbit in the US as an editor, acquiring science fiction and fantasy. Previously, he was an editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The Huffington Post noticed tweets from Harper Perennial indicating that Michael Chabon‘s TELEGRAPH AVENUE is being presented in-house for publication in fall 2012. A spokesperson […]
An Off-Catalog Pelecanos Book, Priced for Discovery
Reagan Arthur Books is trying an interesting strategy with an unexpected George Pelecanos novel, which they will publish next January 23. The 272-page page WHAT IT WAS is a stand-alone, which will be published as a 99-cent ebook and a $9.99 trade paperback. And for staunch fans, they are producing a limited-edition, signed and slip-cased hardcover for $35, with all three editions releasing at the same time. (The new title was quietly listed on bookselling sites in August, though we didn’t realize the interesting price promotion strategy until this week.) Arthur says they wanted Pelecanos’ next regularly-published hardcover to be […]