Shannon Welch has joined Avid Reader as vice president and editorial director. She was most recently editorial director at HarperOne.
Acquisitions: RBmedia
RBMedia has acquired Berrett-Koehler’s audiobook publishing business, in a multi-year exclusive deal that started at the beginning 2024. Berrett-Koehler titles released by RBmedia will be published under the company’s audiobook brand, Ascent Audio. Lesley Iura, VP of editorial for Berrett-Koehler Publishers, said in a release, “We are excited to partner with RBmedia to serve and expand the audience for our authors’ works. As an industry leader and partner with other top business publishers, they have a deep understanding of the markets we serve. We believe that leveraging RBmedia’s unique abilities in spoken audio will help amplify the voices of our […]
Learning and Growing
We often get asked who in publishing is doing interesting things and where to find innovation of note and often there are not a lot of great answers. Last year was unusual, however, in that a lot interesting things happened and there’s been very little attention paid — so we thought it was worth a quick review to underscore some of these potentially powerful new ideas at work in the marketplace. Two of the hottest imprints came from outside the mainstream of big five publishing. Sourcebooks’ Bloom Books imprint was on track to register close to $100 million in gross […]
Today Show Read With Jenna Pick
Bookselling: Yu and Me Reopens
NYC bookstore Yu and Me celebrated its grand re-opening on Sunday, after being shut down by a fire in the building in July. Located in Chinatown, it is the city’s first Asian-American female-owned bookstore-cafe-bar. A GoFundMe that raised $350,000 to help with the repairs. Owner Lucy Yu said, “It’s pretty overwhelming. I’m joyful, but I don’t know, reflective. It’s just really good to be back home.”
City Lights Bookstore Unionizes
Employees at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco have unionized, joining the Industrial Workers of the World Local 660, KQED reports. Approximately 16 workers are eligible, and most have signed union-authorization cards. The store plans to recognize the union, with an official decision slated for tomorrow. “City Lights has always been actively engaged in the project of creating and evolving a fulfilling, equitable, and humane workplace. This is a key to our institutional philosophy, and it has informed our practice from the beginning,” City Lights executive director Elaine Katzenberger. “If unionization can provide us with new tools for helping us […]