Add the estate of Catherine Cookson to the growing number of authors selling digital backlist titles directly (and, in this instance, exclusively through Amazon in the US and UK.) The author’s literary representatives at Sheil Land formed a separate company, Peach Tree Publishing, which will sell 91 Cookson titles as ebooks priced between $1.50 and $5.99. Cookson’s agent Sonia Land engages in some mutual controversy-starting with the Daily Mail by saying she never informed Cookson’s print publishers Transworld or Simon & Schuster of the ebook plan: I haven’t told either firm about the deal and I am sure they are going […]
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Borders Asks Court to Authorize $8.3 Million in Executive Bonus Payments
In papers filed last week, Borders asked a federal bankruptcy court to authorize as much as $8.3 million in bonus payments to company executives – including up to $1.7 million to CEO Michael Edwards. Seventeen executives are covered by the largest bonus program, which could add between $4.7m and $7.1m, while a second $1.2 million bonus program covers 25 “director-level” managers that court papers say are “critical to the debtors’ reorganization and to ongoing business.” The company said that 70% of its top executives have been with Borders for 18 months or less, and that bonuses were not paid at […]
Briefs: Dorchester Woes Continue; The Brand of Mary Higgins Clark; Penguin Piracy Suit; And More
Dorchester Publishing continues to do its best zombie impression, as a number of authors have learned the ailing company continues to sell digital copies of their work even after they no longer hold the rights, and despite repeated assurances they would stop this practice. Horror writer Brian Keene detailed the situation on his blog, saying that he found unauthorized e-copies of his books under the Dorchester banner selling through various digital outlets. “In the most recent case (iBooks), Dorchester blamed their vendor, Libre Digital, but provided no documentation verifying this. An employee at Apple cast doubt on this explanation. In the […]
St. Martin’s Pays a Reported $2M For Four Books By Amanda Hocking, Self-Publishing’s Reluctant Heroine
This year every week in publishing could be considered eventful, but this week in particular had a special kind of symmetry, as the very publishing house Barry Eisler walked away from to publish on his own brought Amanda Hocking into the fold. Despite sources indicating otherwise a few days ago, St. Martin’s emerged the victor of the auction for Hocking’s new Watersong YA paranormal series, reportedly paying more than $2 million for World English rights (which, of course, includes digital rights, too.) “I’ve done as much with self-publishing as any person can do,” Hocking told the NYT Thursday. “People have […]
Borders Pulls a Distribution Switcheroo: TN Center Stays Open And PA Facility Will Close
Borders announced it would shutter its distribution facility in La Vergne, TN months ago, but yesterday they did an about-face and will keep the center open, which also spares the 300 employees who were set to lose their jobs. But the news was grimmer for workers at Borders’ Northeastern facility in Carlisle, PA. The company has said for months that they can no longer afford to support three distribution centers, and so the nearly five-year-old 600,000-square foot facility will now be shuttered in July or August, with 333 workers set to be laid off. Borders other distribution center in California […]
S&S CEO Reidy: Ebook Sales Between 15-20 Percent, But Apps and Enhanced Ebooks A Non-Starter
Yesterday’s PublishingPoint conversation Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy’s conversation with Google Book Rights Registry CEO Michael Healy could not have been timed any better, though the news that emerged had less to do with the Google Book Settlement — and the now unclear future of the Rights Registry — and more with the original intent of the event, on S&S’s plan for existing and future digital initiatives. Reidy did comment briefly about the GBS rejection, saying she was disappointed, but the news wasn’t too surprising” and that she hopes it is “another way station along the way to a […]