Len Riggio’s willingness to pay an above-market price to convert almost 1 million options into Barnes & Noble shares has sparked the latest legal appeal from Yucaipa, which filed a motion in Delaware today asking for review by the state’s Supreme Court. According to their statement, Yucaipa moved to set aside the initial ruling after Riggio exercised his options and was denied. But the say the court indicated in that denial that the initial case “was tried on the premise that… Len Riggio would not be exercising out-of-the-money options” and found his doing so was “awkward.” It appears that Yucaipa […]
Mockingjay’s Big Opening Sends Scholastic Back to Press
Scholastic announced that they have sold more than 450,000 print and ebook copies of Suzanne Collins’ MOCKINGJAY in the first week on sale, and have gone back to press for another 400,000 copies. Print sales in outlets tracked by Nielsen BookScan were a little over 350,000 copies in the first five days of sale, through August 28. That easily ranks among the biggest opening weeks this year, well above even the opening sale for even Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest in May. (Little, Brown Children’s said they sold 350,000 units of Stephenie Meyer’s The Short Second […]
Oprah-Watch Revised
Following yesterday’s analysis of potential clues from online metadata about Oprah Winfrey’s forthcoming book club selection, we note that subsequent to our story, Indigo removed their posted listing of the title and now says “unfortunately, the page you are looking for is unavailable or no longer exists.”
Indies Take Over Book Reviews for San Diego Union Tribune
Following the elimination of the San Diego Union Tribune’s arts and book critic, four area bookstores–Warwick’s, Mysterious Galaxy, The Book Works, and The Yellow Brick Road–have joined with the newspaper to provide weekly book content. Each week starting as of August 22, one store takes a turn recommending and writing about a title.BTW
More on Samsung’s Tablet
Further to yesterday’s story on Samsung tablet’s and their Kobo-powered reader app and store, the company will release the device in Italy first and then in other parts of Europe in an agreement with Vodafone. A US release is still expected for this fall, after the company lines up a cellphone carrier. Executive Hankil Yoon says in an interview with the WSH that they expect to ship 10 million units worldwide next year. WSJ
People
Kobo has hired Marina Glogovac as chief marketing officer. She is the former ceo of online dating service Lavalife. Denise Little will join the Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency this month. She was formerly executive editor at Tekno Books, head of Kensington”s Denise Little Presents imprint, and a buyer for Barnes & Noble. She will represent romance, paranormal, mystery, thriller, science-fiction/fantasy, non-fiction, Christian books, and horror. Eric Mullett has moved over to marketing director at Thomas Nelson Fiction (he was running marketing for their gift book division), and Katie Bond has been promoted to publicity manager. Heather Cadenhead has been hired […]