The Tisch family is the latest group of wealth investors to take in interest in Barnes & Noble. Daniel Tisch filed the required SEC form to disclose that he now holds a 5.1 percent stake in the bookseller (or nearly 3.1 million shares). A little fewer than half the shares are held by his personal investment company, TowerView, while the rest of the stake is controlled by Four Partners, another investment company owned by all four Tisch brothers and run by Thomas Tisch, though Daniel Tisch has “sole voting power and sole investment power” over the entire holding. Tisch has […]
eNews: Safari Acquires Threepress and Ibis, and More
Threepress Consulting and their Ibis Reader have been acquired by Safari Online. Threepress founder Liza Daly (who created our first BEA web app) writes: “Safari provides us with an unparalleled reserve of content, sales team, marketing savvy, and publisher relationships. We’re bringing our focus on standards, accessibility, interactivity, and emerging technology.” Daly will be vp of engineering at Safari. The company writes, “They’re joining us as part of an acquisition that brings a rich set of web-based ebook reading technology to Safari, along with a talented engineering team that includes some of the world’s foremost engineers working with EPUB, ebooks, […]
eReaders Owners Could Double, But Print-Lovers Are Growing, Too
For the third consecutive year, at Digital Book World later this month, Jack McKeown from Verso Digital (and Books & Books Westhampton Beach) will present original consumer survey data and analysis on consumer habits regarding both ebooks and print books, from responses elicited from over 2,200 respondents after November’s “Cyber Monday.” By their results, ereader ownership could as much as double over the next year–6.4 percent of respondents are “very likely” to purchase, and another 9.9 percent are somewhat likely, with 15.8 percent of people saying they “already own” an reader. (That ownership percentage is roughly consistent with what Bowker […]
How Many Self-Published Authors Were Bestsellers In 2011?
Self-publishing success stories were another big, perhaps overplayed, theme in 2011, and the new year starts off with the transition of Amanda Hocking bestsellers to St. Martin’s. The first in her Trylle Trilogy SWITCHED was reissued on January, with both the ebook and 336-page paperback priced at $8.99. TORN follows on February 28 and ASCEND will be rereleased on April 24. Here’s a link for an NPR All Things Considered piece on Hocking. Meanwhile, a user of Penguin start-up Book Country, Kerry Schafer, elicited interest from agent Deidre Knight for her fantasy novel BETWEEN, and made a two-book deal with […]
Rachael Ray Moves to Atria; Gets Imprint (and QR Codes)
Following Reader’s Digest’s sale of the magazine Every Day With Rachael Ray to Meredith last October, the cooking personality is moving publishing houses as well, signing with Atria after nine books with Clarkson Potter. (Ray was originally published by Lake Isle Press.) Ray tells the WSJ she wants to make her new cookbooks “exciting for people using their Nooks or iPads” and says she was attracted by a Tom Watson golf book Atria published last year that used QR codes editorially to link to instructional videos. (Yes, this is the first known example of QR codes actually benefiting a publisher.) […]
Clean-Up In the Lunch Aisle
A couple of updates/corrections to stories from last week. Regarding Barnes & Noble‘s original purchase of Sterling Publishing, we have all been using the incorrect figure of “approximately $115 million,” which is what BN said in their SEC filing on January 23, 2003. In the bookseller’s printed annual report to shareholders, they explain that the real cost was $122.593 million (which include cash proceeds of just over the reported $115 million, but also $7.415 million “to reduce short-term debt.” Additionally, contrary to longstanding informal impressions within the business, someone with direct knowledge of the sale says that BN’s $122.6 million […]