It took quite a while for the ABA’s opening keynote to get past the preambles and underway. Roughly a half hour into the allotted time, R.J. Julia owner Roxanne Coady explained that the panel’s purpose was “to talk a little bit about the partnership between authors and booksellers – formerly the bedrock of our literary landscape” at a time of “extraordinary disintermediation.” There’s an assumption about independents, she explained, of a “Mom and Pop/Apple Pie theory – that we have to exist”–but she suggested it’s more a matter of the “cute pet theory – we want them around, just not […]
EU to Consider Closer Look at Google Settlement
Germany plans to ask the European Commission to take a closer look at the Google Book Search settlement and the library scanning program, and “France, Austria and the Netherlands also said to be keen to have the issue put on the table.” One European diplomat says there is concern about putting the European digital library Europeana (which presents public domain works only) on an equal footing with Google’s book database. A separate article reports that “EU competitiveness ministers meeting in Brussels tomorrow and Friday are likely to ask the Commission to launch an investigation into the implications of the project […]
Geringer Allies with Egmont USA
Children’s publishing start-up Egmont USA has “formed an alliance” with Laura Geringer Books. Geringer ran her imprint for 17 years at Harper Children’s until leaving the company last August. At the time, Susan Katz said in the memo announcing Geringer’s departure that she “looks forward to having more time to pursue her career as a writer, to devote her energies to the development of a new business with the capability of delivering story content on multiple platforms, and to channel more time into First Book.” Geringer will edit “a select group of titles” for Egmont starting with the fall 20l0 […]
UK eBook Announcements
As part of their Book and Beyond program, Random House UK officially announced the release some of their current bestsellers through Apple’s App Store (while embargoed, the news was already reported by a UK paper.) Developed in partnership with Verlagsgruppe Random House in Germany, each ebook is sold as a standalone app rather than working through a particular reader, and they are priced at 7.49 pounds and up.Release Separately, Penguin UK announced an agreement to make its full catalog of epub titles (“around” 2,000 and growing) available through GoSpoken.com’s platform for mobile devices. And DK just launched their top 10 […]
Sales Drop 12 Percent at Borders
First quarter sales at Borders fell 12.1 percent overall at $641.5 million, with same-store sales down 13.5 percent at the superstores and down 5.5 percent at Waldenbooks. Superstores and Borders.com comprised $536.7 million of sales, with just $76.9 million coming from the 376 Waldens open at the end of the quarter. International sales, primarily from Paperchase, fell 14.9 percent to $27.9 million, suffering from the fall in the pound. The company lost $15.9 million or 27 cents per share on an operating basis–better than last year’s loss, and better than the 50-cent loss analysts expected–but the total loss was $86 […]
People: Howard Adds Two Execs
Becky Nesbitt will join Howard Books as vp, editor-in-chief on June 1 and Jennifer Willingham has already started as vp, publicity. Nesbitt was at Tyndale House for 16 years, most recently as associate publisher for nonfiction (though she led the fiction acquisitions team prior to that). Willingham worked for Guideposts Books most recently, and has also worked at Thomas Nelson and B&H. Recently appointed publisher Jonathan Merkh says that “moving the business to Nashville has enabled us to attract key talent to further fuel our growth. With the backing of Simon & Schuster and our new staff additions, we are […]