It’s hard to run your own show and cover it at the same time. We’ll have some of our own reports from the interesting Publishers Launch BEA Conference shortly–but in the meantime, there are some stories from others to check out. TheStreet.com has a long write-up of Providence Equity Partners senior advisor Brian Napack’s discussion of investment, consolidation and scale. “Amazon, at its heart, is a customer relationship management company. Publishers, at their heart, are author relationship management companies.” But each needs, and is interested in developing for themselves, what the other one has. Laura Owen at paidContent has a long piece on what […]
Corporate: S&S Canada Gets Permission to Publish Directly
After more than a decade of waiting, Simon & Schuster Canada has received approval from Heritage Canada to publish local authors directly in Canada, rather than just import and distribute books from the S&S US list. “Simon & Schuster Canada has met its obligations under the Investment Canada Act and may now launch a book publishing business in Canada,” Heritage Canada told the Globe and Mail in an email. President of Simon & Schuster Canada Kevin Hanson said in a statement, “This will give Canadian authors more opportunities to be published in Canada, discovered by Canadian readers and made known […]
Children’s: Joyce and Moonbot Studios Launch Atheneum Line; Jim Carrey Pairs with Perseus
William Joyce and Moonbot Studios (which he co-founded) are building on the success of the picture book The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (based on their bestselling app) with a whole line of Moonbot Books, for Atheneum. The line launches with The Mischievians this fall and aims to publish “at least one or two books per season,” including a picture book based on their successful app The Numberlys. Moonbot Books will be edited by Atheneum editorial director Caitlyn Dlouhy and illustrated by Joyce and other Moonbot artists. Separately, actor Jim Carrey got a lot of attention in March […]
Macmillan CEO John Sargent Speaks on DOJ, Amazon, and More
“If you see me struggling with language, and being tentative, it’s because I’m going to be called to testify next week in court,” Macmillan ceo John Sargent said near the beginning of his ABA keynote conversation with outgoing president Becky Anderson. He’d already cautioned the audience that he was nervous to “step out of the background” as, someone generally reticent to comment publicly. Despite those caveats, Sargent ended up having quite a bit to say about the Department of Justice (though not as much about Macmillan’s settlement), self-publishing, Amazon, and other publishing matters. Sargent felt the need to speak out […]
Digital: Harper Launches eGalley Platform, and More
At BEA, HarperCollins announced their new in-house program to provide and manage digital galleys as well as promotional copies of their ebooks (including providing authors with multiple ebook “copies” of their books). Called the e-Insider Program, it works from a new website — e.hc.com — and uses Adobe Digital Editions (and thus requires a free Adobe ID to read the ebooks). Authors will be given a set of one-time use of codes, each good for a single ebook download. For trade shows, like this one, “rather than distributing physical copies of books, HarperCollins can now provide a code that will […]
Apple Won’t Settle
Apple ceo Tim Cook addressed the ebook lawsuits briefly in a long interview on Tuesday as part of the D11 conference. By his account, the government is requiring that Apple admit guilt as part of any settlement, even though none of the settling publishers did so (and in fact, out of court, they have all continued to proclaim their innocence). Cook said, “The e-book case is bizarre. We’re not going to sign a settlement that says we did something we didn’t do. So we’re going to fight.” The trial is scheduled to begin June 3. As we noted previously, Judge […]