BookTour.com, which has been privately funded by founder Chris Anderson, has raised $350,000 in Series A funding. According to the regulatory filing, backers include Amazon.com.
Lunch Weekly for Monday, April 13
Find Us at the London Book Fair We will have a “News Desk” at next week’s London Book Fair, though this year we’ll actually be right in the middle of the Rights Center in an easily findable location. As you come up the escalator from the main exhibition floor, turn left down the aisle and we will be on the right where tables 16I and J would be, as shown on this handy map. Feel free to report deals live as you make them, share other news or just come by to visit. Once again, we’ll have cookies (not biscuits) […]
After GBLT and Erotica Titles Lose Rankings and Other Features at Amazon, Company Says "Glitch" Will Be Fixed
A groundswell of Internet-driven protest built up on Sunday after YA author Mark Probst posted on a Live Journal blog that two days prior the Amazon sales ranking for two recently-released gay romance books had disappeared from the titles’ Amazon pages. An Amazon Advantage publisher, Probst posted the explanation he says he received from Amazon Advantage Member Services representative Ashlyn D: “In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude ‘adult’ material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.” As word […]
Delacorte to Issue Unpublished Vonnegut Stories
Delacorte Press has assembled a collection of previously unpublished short stories by the late Kurt Vonnegut, which will include illustrations by the author, for publication in November 2009. The publisher has plans for a second collection of unpublished Vonnegut “writings” and a book of correspondence to and from the author. They also have acquired a follow-up memoir by the author’s son, pediatrician Mark Vonnegut. Bantam Dell editor-in-chief Nit Taublib and editor Kerri Buckley are credited in the announcement as having “put the collection together, often comparing and contrasting many annotated drafts of individual stories.”
People
Sarah Reidy joins Pocket as associate director of publicity this week, moving over from Soho Press (where she was director for the past two years). Justin Hargett has rejoined Soho as the new director of publicity, after working at Ohio University Press, Other Press, and Oxford University Press. At the Random House Publishing Group, director of marketing for the Bantam/Dell imprints Carolyn Schwartz will now also oversee marketing for Ballantine as well. Spain’s most prolific novelist, Corin Tellado, 81, died on Saturday. She published over 4,000 books during her lifetime and is said to have sold over 400 million copies.
People
John Mendelson will join Candlewick Press in mid-May as svp, sales and digital Initiatives. He is currently director of trade sales at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, where he has worked for more than a decade in a variety of sales positions. At Random House UK’s Harvill Secker, among the many lines affected by recent layoffs, Liz Foley moves over from Vintage UK to serve as publishing director, reporting to publisher Dan Franklin, as Geoff Mulligan leaves the post but continues to edit his authors on a freelance basis, the Bookseller reports. Stuart Williams has been promoted to editorial director; and Rebecca […]