Recent days have brought many more Best Books lists from major newspapers and magazines. Among those that we are adding to our aggregated Best of the Best of 2011 tabulation are lists from: Chicago Sun-Times critics Houston Chronicle Men’s Journal Miami Herald New York Daily News Pittsburgh Post-Gazette San Francisco Chronicle (top 10) San Francisco Chronicle (top 100)
Harper Sues Open Road for Infringement Over “Julie of the Wolves” eBook
Many people have long suspected that the only way to clarify the status of electronic rights for older, so-called “in dispute” works is through litigation. Just before Christmas, late in the day on Friday, December 23, HarperCollins says they filed the first suit in this unresolved area against Open Road Integrated Media in Federal court in the NY’s Southern District, alleging copyright infringement in their ebook edition of Jean Craighead George’s 1971 classic, JULIE OF THE WOLVES. (Other cases so far have had negotiated solutions, or led to standing but unlitigated disagreements.) Open Road is, of course, the company founded […]
Bestsellers: ELF ON THE SHELF’S Rising Popularity; Big Sales for Tim Tebow
The AP looks at the rising popularity of the holiday picture book ELF ON THE SHELF, which has sold 2.5 million copies since its 2005 publication by CCA & B Publishers, the Marietta, GA-based publishing houses founded by ELF creators Carol Aebersold and her daughters Chanda Bell and Christa Pitts after a round of publisher rejections. CCA&B recorded $10 million in revenue in 2010 and now employs 25 people. “We used to have to stop people in the aisles at retail shows and explain what this was,” Pitts explained but now, “people are coming in and they already know. It’s […]
eBook Sales Dip Further in October
The AAP announced their tabulation of sales for October from reporting publishers. In the closely-watched ebook sales category–where the AAP’s monthly number is the only standing statistic we have to go on, the now 20 reporting publishers recorded sales of $72.8 million, down from $80.3 million in August. (Rizzoli is now among those contributing data.) It’s the lowest monthly ebook total recorded since April, and lower as an absolute comparison since the matching results that month came from just 14 publishers. Seasonably sizable shipments of print books and flat month-to-month ebook sales trends left digital books in fourth place, trailing […]
Macmillan Changes College Division Name to Macmillan Higher Education
As of January 1, Macmillan’s college education division, formerly known as the Bedford, Worth & Freeman Publishing Group, will be rebranded as Macmillan Higher Education. The group includes Bedford/St. Martin’s, W.H. Freeman, Worth Publishers, Hayden McNeil, and i>clicker. The K-12 Division will still operate under the Bedford, Worth & Freeman name. “This name change is indicative of our growing position as a global media company,” said ceo John Sargent in a statement. “Moving to Macmillan not only signifies our collective strength and the breadth of our offerings, but also allows us to more fully leverage our investments in print and […]
Favorite Books of 2011, From the News Editor
This year I made a conscious effort to read fewer books while also reading more widely, succeeding in both instances (bearing in mind that my definition of “fewer” is at least three standard deviations higher than normal. For what it’s worth, I’ve read about 320 books with ten more days to go in 2011.) The list of ten books – six fiction, four non-fiction – appear below, in alphabetical order, mostly because it was hard to pick a flat-out favorite book. (For brevity’s sake, my favorite crime novels appear elsewhere.) Fiction Alan Hollinghurst, THE STRANGER’S CHILD (Knopf) — not for […]