Larry McMurtry, 73, tells the Dallas Morning News in advance of the release of his new novel RHINO RANCH later this month: “I don’t think I can write fiction any more. I think I’ve used it up over 30 novels. That’s a lot of novels.” He adds, “Most great novels are written by people between 40 and 60, or 35 and 60,” he says. “Not too many great novels are written by people over 75. Hardly any. Maybe Tolstoy.”DMN Another longtime newspaper books editor (and also NBCC board member) Geeta Sharma-Jensen at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is taking a buyout and […]
Bookselling: St. Paul's Common Good Books Is Robbed
Last Wednesday night at 1 in the morning, two people broke into Common Good Books (owned by Garrison Keillor) and stole the store’s safe and damaged the cash registers, taking “a few thousand dollars” that had been left in the store overnight. The store posted surveillance camera photos on their site and sent a Tweet looking for a “goateed loser in longshorts and a Longhorns cap carrying a safe at 1:20 last night.”Star Tribune
Lunch Weekly for Monday, August 3
Deal Reports Just e-mail to deals@PublishersMarketplace if you aren’t using the online form linked below. Report a deal using the online form The Key As usual, the handy key to our Lunch deal categories. While all reports are always welcome, those that include a category will generally receive a higher listing when it comes time to put them all together. “nice deal” $1 – $49,000 “very nice deal” $50,000 – $99,000 “good deal” $100,000 – $250,000 “significant deal” $251,000 – $499,000 “major deal” $500,000 and up FICTION Debut Robin Becker’s BRAINS: a zombie memoir, the first-person account of a […]
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt To Cut 65 More Jobs
Another 65 jobs will be cut from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Boston and Orlando offices in the wake f a deal signed earlier this month to purchase information technology services from Teaneck, NJ-based global outsourcing firm Cognizant Technology Solutions. An HMH spokesman told the Boston Globe that Cognizant will take over responsibility for application development and maintenance, while Houghton Mifflin’s information technology department will continue to manage strategy, direction, business knowledge, innovation, and the customer interface.Globe
Indigo Up Slightly In First Quarter, But Loss Widens
Sales at Canada’s dominant bookseller Indigo rose 1.6 percent in the first quarter at $193.6 million (Canadian), with same-store superstore sales up 1.4 percent and same-store sales at their smaller-format stores up 0.8 percent. Online sales continue to decline, though, down 9.1 percent to $19.1 million, and the company says they have “eliminated certain non profitable business.” Their net loss was worse, at $2.3 million compared to a $1.2 million loss a year ago. CEO Heather Reisman says the “drop in bottom line results reflects our increased operating investment this year in both Pistachio and Shortcovers.” (Pistacho is “an eco-friendly […]
Google's Clancy On How They See the Future
Expanding on the remarks we quoted from David Drummond at the NYPL earlier this week, Google Books engineering director Dan Clancy explained further at a session last night how they see the future of electronic books. In short: ebooks will be stored in the cloud, which means that cloud has to be managed by a large, trusted party; physical bookstores need to sell digital books; and you should be able to read your cloud-stored books through any device. “We’re trying to make what would be an open model that encourages competition.” For Clancy’s words: “I believe people want their books […]