Doubleday announced an April 10 publication date for John Grisham‘s next novel CALICO JOE, set within the world of major league baseball in 1973. USA TODAY Simon & Schuster Children’s will release DON’T FORGET NANA, GOD BLESS OUR TROOPS, a picture book by vice president Joe Biden’s wife Jill Biden, on June 5. The AP reports the book, illustrated by Raul Colon, is “told from the point of view of granddaughter Natalie Biden and a tribute to soldiers and their families.” In a brief interview Biden said: “I really feel that you write your best about what you know best…That’s […]
eNews: Another Textbook Reader (From Chegg); eBooks Are 28% of Sourcebooks’ Sales; Cemetery Dance’s Digital Subscription; and More
Taking advantage of interest around Apple’s press conference tomorrow, textbook rental company Chegg is wading into the morass of too many proprietary ereading platforms for students with yet another product. Their cloud-based eTextbook Reader is HTML5-based, developed by 3D3R, an engineering team recently acquired by Chegg. The app is currently optimized for iPads and computers, though the company says other platforms are on the way. Their product uses publisher-supplied PDFs, and the company says they have about 40,000 textbooks available from all of the major publishers. (The WSJ says Kno claims about 150,000 titles, with options to either purchase or […]
People, Etc.
At McGraw-Hill Professional, Knox Huston has been promoted to senior editor in the Business Group. The Bent Agency is opening a UK branch, run by Molly Ker Hawn, who will be representing authors of YA and middle grade fiction exclusively for both the UK and US markets. She has had editorial roles at Chronicle and Dial and was national programs director for the Children’s Book Council. Rachel Fershleiser has joined Tumblr, where she specializes in outreach to authors, publishers, and literary organizations. She was previously community manager at Bookish. Anne Tyler has won the 2012 Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence, […]
The 2012 Winter Institute Books Preview
The ABA’s Winter Institute convenes this week, and each year the number of attending authors and books being touted grows ever larger (this year more than 70 writers are taking part in various luncheons and evening receptions over the three-day event.) As part of our coverage of Wi7, and repeating what we did for last year’s Winter Institute, we’ve culled a list of what we think are the most notable forthcoming Winter and Spring adult trade titles being touted in New Orleans this week to ten — offering a mix of reviews of those we’ve already read with “scouting reports” […]
McGraw-Hill Said to Have Second Pairing with Apple
You can expect the steady stream of speculation over Apple’s “education announcement” on Thursday at the Guggenheim Museum in New York to continue unabated. The WSJ cites a person “familiar with the matter” who says that McGraw-Hill “has been working with Apple on its announcement since June.” The paper notes that Cengage Learning, which has worked with Apple in the past, will attend Thursday’s event, though we imagine most educational and textbook publishers will as well. Ironically, the Journal doesn’t seem to recall that McGraw-Hill was supposed to be one of the marquee launch partners when the iPad debuted in early 2010, […]
eNews: Tracking Kobo; Coliloquy Launches “Active Fiction”
Kobo’s evp of business development Todd Humphrey reiterates to Publishing Perspectives that both Brazil and Japan are “likely” markets for the ebook company in 2012, among “ten plus countries” Kobo has in their sights for 2012. Indeed ceo Michael Serbinis said late last year when the Rakuten purchase was announced that, “We expect to be in Japan early into the new year; we expect to be in Brazil next year and this is all possible now. We did a handful of countries this year and we’ll do a couple dozen next year.” But Kobo said last April that they expected […]