At about 6 o’clock Friday evening, a wave of Macmillan buy buttons returned to Amazon in wave, after the two parties finalized their new contract earlier in the day. From Robert Jordan to Wolf Hall, SARAH’S KEY, Douglas Preston’s IMPACT and Kristin Hannah’s paperbacks (but not yet her new release hardcover Winter Garden), Macmillan books are returning to on-sale status, in print and in at least selected Kindle editions. Andrew Young’s THE POLITICIAN and Atul Gawande’s THE CHECKLIST MANIFESTO were restored later, around 6:45, and we are told the full Macmillan list is expected to be active again shortly.
News
Macmillan Speaks–In NYT Ad
In a full-page ad in the art section of today’s New York Times, Henry Holt’s Metropolitan imprint celebrates the sales success of Atul Gawande’s THE CHECKLIST MANIFESTO. A bold tagline offers an of-the-moment twist on the standard declaration: “Available at booksellers everywhere except Amazon.”
Pershing Square's Ackman on Borders: "We Don't See It As a Likely Bankruptcy."
As part of a segment on CNBC’s Fast Money Tuesday evening, Pershing Square CEO and founder Willam Ackman – Borders’ majority stakeholder and holder of a $42.5 million loan that will come due on April 1 – prognosticated on the retailer’s chances of survival: “I think [bankruptcy] is a low-probability event. The company’s made a lot of progress in last 12 months from operational and a financial point of view” and “really stabilized itself financially.” He later added: “The stock trades as if it’s going to go bankrupt at $1 a share…[but] we’re going to see more when company reports […]
ScrollMotion Signs on Textbook Publishers for iPad Deal
Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Kaplan and HMH are among several textbook publishers that have signed with Scrollmotion to adapt and develop textbooks as applications, test-prep and study guides for the iPad. Scrollmotion will take and adapt digital files provided by publishers for the iPad, and then add extra features, which the WSJ reports “include applications to let students play video, highlight text, record lectures, take printed notes, search the text, and participate in interactive quizzes to test how much they’ve learned and where they may need more work.” To date textbook adoption on e-readers has been slow (as Amazon could attest with […]
Cengage Sues Houghton Over College Sale, Saying they Pumped Market with Cheap Books
Cengage Learning filed suit against Houghton Miffln Harcourt in a Manhattan Federal Court, seeking at least $20 million and alleging breach of warranty, misrepresentation and bad faith. They allege that Houghton pumped inexpensive college textbooks to international buyers with “known propensities to redistribute these textbooks back into the U.S. market through unauthorized distribution channels” prior to the sale of the division. They complain that those sales inhibited Cengage’s ability to sell to legitimate international distributors and poisoned the US market as those companies redistributed the cheap copies back into the home market. Cengage claims HMH agreed “to not behave ‘outside […]
Nelson Considers Pricing Defenses
Thomas Nelson ceo Mike Hyatt blogs on the bestseller price war, saying that “publishers themselves need to find the courage to act in everyone’s long-term interests. As the content providers, they have all the power they need to stop these pricing practices.” That “courage” can lead to some radical options, such as not selling to major vendors. He indicates that Nelson is discussing at least three options: delaying ebook releases; “stag[ing] the channel rollout of certain frontlist titles” (the implied meaning is that they would not sell some hardcovers to mass merchandisers at all in the first release window, but […]