Education Media and Publishing Group ceo Barry O’Callaghan continues to provide an astonishing mix of remarks and revisionist history to the Irish media. It “bemuses” him that he’s “being positioned as the bad guy” in the evaporation of billions of dollars of equity. It’s not his fault, “It’s just bad luck for me and my fellow shareholders. It’s nothing different from the people who bought houses [in the boom].” Plus, “people are perfectly entitled to take a swing at me because I’ve lost them money and I’m disappointed, too. But don’t blame me for what I don’t control. This downturn […]
Awards: Borders Original Voices
The bookseller announced the winners of their annual awards yesterday, which include a cash prize and chainwide promotion: FictionThe Calligrapher’s Daughter, Eugenia Kim NonfictionShop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, Matthew Crawford Children’s/YAAfter, by Amy EfawRelease
BISG Surveys eBook Consumers
The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) has released headline results from their first survey of Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading, conducted among approximately 550 people from Bowker’s PubTrack Consumer panel who said they had purchased an ebook within the past year. Computers were still the top ereading “devices,” cited by 47 percent of respondents, followed by the Kindle at 32 percent and other ereaders at 10 percent. “Roughly one-fifth of survey respondents said they’ve stopped purchasing print books within the past 12 months in favor of acquiring the e-book editions.” One question asked how, for a favorite author, consumers would […]
Espresso Book Machine Aims to Gain Heft with Xerox Agreement
Makers of the slow-to-grow Espresso Book Machine On Demand Books announced a sales and marketing partnership with Xerox that could add some muscle to the company’s efforts. Together they will sell a high-speed Xerox copier/printer that they say can print approximately 40,000 300-page books a year, paired with On Demand’s finishing machine and software. That is a significantly higher capacity than is provided by the other printers that have traditionally been paired with On Demand’s finisher–though the new package is more expensive, too, adding approximately $20,000 to the roughly $100,000 cost of the current full package from On Demand. Presumably, […]
Proposal News
Ken Atchity at Atchity Entertainment International is launching a simultaneous pitch to New York publishers and Hollywood studios for the posthumously-completed manuscript of NYT-bestselling author William Diehl’s SEVEN WAYS TO DIE. Prior to his death in 2006, Diehl had written over 400 pages of manuscript, and left behind a working outline, notes and chapter drafts. AEI worked with Diehl and his screenwriting partner Michael Simpson, and along with his Cairo Simpson Entertainment took over the literary estate from William Morris. AEI and Simpson’s Informant Media (“Crazy Heart”) are currently producing Diehl’s Eureka. Informant also optioned Diehl’s Hooligans; Scott Abramovich’s Breaking […]
Notes
At Penguin Classics, John Siciliano has been promoted to senior editor. The announced one-million-copy first printing for Cornelia Funke’s fall release RECKLESS is a worldwide number covering projections for all of the initial laydown markets.