The etailer released their traditional post-Christmas non-statistics. Reaching for new non-specific superlatives about Kindle sales, they say the new model is “the bestselling product in Amazon’s history, eclipsing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7).” We don’t know final sales for the book by the company, but on October 24, 2007 they reported sales of 2.5 million copies worldwide, calling it their “largest new product release.” In today’s release ceo Jeff Bezos acknowledges the even bigger sales of tablets, insisting in a defensive way that “sustomers report using their LCD tablets for games, movies, and web browsing and their […]
WikiLeaks Assange Is Writing to Raise Funds
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange claims he had to sell a memoir to raise funds to defend himself, telling the Times of London, “I don’t want to write this book, but I have to. I have already spent [more than $300,000] for legal costs, and I need to defend myself and keep WikiLeaks afloat.” Did anyone tell him how long it was going to take collect his advance? Assange says Knopf is paying about $800,000 and Canongate is paying him approximately $500,000. He estimates that money from serialization and other territories will add another few hundred thousand dollars, though again its […]
Nashville GLBT OutLoud Bookstore Is Closing; Some POD Bestsellers
OutLoud founders Ted Jensen and Kevin Medley announced they will start liquidating inventory and close their store after 15 years in business. The Tennessean says “they alluded to reasons for closing such as high interest rates that small businesses can’t afford, lack of meaningful legislation that would help small businesses and the unfair advantages chain stores have over the small, locally owned ones.” Tennessean When the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale finishes a renovation in January, they will feature a new boutique run by Miami’s Books & Books. Owner Mitchell Kaplan says “there are terrific people to partner with…. […]
People
Abigail Cleaves will join Shreve Williams Public Relations as associate director of publicity on January 17. She has been assistant publicity director at the Penguin Press, where she has worked for the past five years. Courtney Allison will join Vintage/Anchor as a senior publicist. She has been publicist at Palgrave Macmillan, and was previously at Viking Penguin.
Simon & Schuster’s Reidy: “The Year…Publishing Changed Irrevocably”
Carolyn Reidy tells employees in her year-end letter that they will be “surpassing our prior year by a large margin,” noting, “I am confident that this year will be remembered as the year in which publishing changed irrevocably. After a full decade of speculation concerning how or even if we could manage the transition to a digital age, this year digital publishing really took off; there is no doubt that its steep growth trajectory will continue for the foreseeable future.” But “the bricks-and-mortar bookselling environment continued to lag previous years, and this is reflected in revenues lower than we’d like.” […]
Lunch Weekly for Monday, December 20
FICTION DebutHopwood Award winner and University of Michigan MFA graduate, Christopher Hebert’s THE BOILING SEASON, which follows a young man’s fight to save a palatial estate on a divided and politically volatile Caribbean island as the gangs and slums of the past he left behind encroach upon the future he has created, to Terry Karten at Harper, by Bill Clegg at William Morris Endeavor (NA). Anita Hughes’s BUTTERFLY RELEASE, the heartwarming story of a young San Francisco heiress who must chart a new road to happiness once her perfect world is turned upside down when she discovers that her French […]