Following their successful pairing of books with discs offering supplementary audio and visuals through the Sourcebooks MediaFusion imprint (beginning with We Interrupt This Broadcast in 1998), the publisher is experimenting with extending that idea to enhanced digital books. Today they are releasing via their own site the digital version of Grammy winner Marty Stuart’s Country Music: The Masters, which released as a physical book last Friday. The ebook version includes a 13-minute video on “the making of” the project, but the most innovative part of Sourcebooks’ approach may be on price. The ebook lists for $19.95 (and they were providing […]
Toews Wins Writers' Trust Prize
Miriam Toews has won the Rogers Writers’ Trust prize–one of Canada’s big three awards for fiction–for her fifth novel, THE FLYING TROUTMANS. CBC
Coming Attractions: Coraline Film's Stop-Motion
USA Today gives an early boost to the film version of Neil Gaiman’s CORALINE, set for release on February 6: “As seen in Henry Selick’s 3-D stop-motion fantasy Coraline, this blue-haired heroine’s adventures in a strange, unsettling parallel universe rival those experienced by Lewis Carroll’s goldilocked girl explorer…. In this era of digitized animated features, when paper and pencils are as scarce as non-talking animal sidekicks, it’s nice to know one of the genre’s premier purveyors is sticking to his old-fashioned aesthetic principles. Although Coraline has been filmed in 3-D, the surreal fantasy is primarily brought to life through Selick’s […]
Lunch Weekly for Monday, November 17
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 Tea Obreht’s THE TIGER’S WIFE, set in war-torn Yugoslavia, where a […]
Hastings: "The Most Difficult Retail Environment We Have Ever Seen"
Hastings reported third quarter sales of $114 million, down six percent from a year ago. Leaving aside rental revenues, sales of merchandise were down 5.1 percent on a same-store sales basis. But books outperformed many of their other media categories, as “books comps increased 1 percent for the quarter, due to strong sales of new trade paperback as well as used trade paperback and used hardbacks, partially offset by lower sales of periodicals.” The company swung from a slim profit this time last year to a net loss of $3.7 million for the quarter. (That loss includes a special $400,000 […]
Obama Boosts Goodwin Book
Barack Obama mentioned his respect for Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book TEAM OF RIVALS: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln many times as a candidate, and now it looks as if the President-elect has promoted his first bestseller (by another author). With the title theme dominating media discussion of Obama’s potential Cabinet selections, Goodwin’s book has now cracked the top 20 at both Amazon (currently at No. 12, even though the paperback is out of stock there until November 23) and BN.com (now at No. 11). Our tracking shows the paperback broke through the top 100 on both sites right after […]