Sales for the five-week holiday period fell 2 percent on a same-store basis and 0.9 percent overall–but extend the period to 10 weeks, and the comps were down 4 percent as overall sales fell 3.2 percent. (The company did not report actual revenue numbers.) Waterstone’s does disclose to the Bookseller that they sold almost 30,000 Sony Readers in the UK since the device went on sale there in September.Release Also in the UK, Bloomsbury issued a nonspecific trading update that says activity “was in line with management’s expectations” and they expect to have cash at the end of the fiscal […]
Mossberg on Shortcovers
The WSJ columnist has been testing Indigo’s new iPhone ereading offering, Shortcovers: “At Shortcovers is the more ambitious and creative of the two. launch, it expects to have 200,000 shortcovers — chapters or other free excerpts — available. About 50,000 of these also will be available for purchase as full digital titles; the rest can be ordered as physical books. Of the digital titles, roughly 15,000 to 20,000 will be older or public-domain books, and the rest commercial books. Typical book prices will be between $10 and $20. If you want to buy paid shortcovers — say a chapter of […]
HBG Cuts Off eBook Wholesalers Over Territorial Enforcement
Also from the epublishing world, TeleRead first reported that over the weekend Hachette Book Group pulled its titles from a number of ebook wholesalers–including Ingram Digital, Overdrive, Mobipocket Paris, and BooksonBoard–over longstanding concerns about the enforcement and verifiable reporting of territorial rights provisions to the publisher. HBG’s Maja Thomas confirms the report for Lunch, noting that this has been “an ongoing issue; we’re not an isolated publisher” in dealing the problem. She underscores that “we’re not trying to restrict stales that are legitimate” and “we want the ebook economy to be robust.” At the same time, in its units throughout […]
Macmillan Adds Speakers Bureau
Following some of their peers, Macmillan has formally announced the launch of their own speakers bureau representing the house’s authors, with representation already for over 100 speakers and “growing rapidly.” Participants include William Shatner, Emily Giffin, Senator Lincoln Chafee, Rick Atkinson, and investment guru Michael Lipper. The venture is run by Ellis Trevor, formerly a publicist at St. Martin’s, and was founded by Trevor and Thomas Dunne Books editor Kathleen Gilligan. There is more information at their site.
Borders Original Voices Winners
Borders announced the winners of their annual awards: FictionSteven Galloway’s debut novel, THE CELLIST OF SARAJEVO The awards committee called it “a haunting story of ordinary and not-so-ordinary people trying to find and retain their humanity in the midst of war and siege.” Non-fictionEric Weiner, THE GEOGRAPHY OF BLISS: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World Young Adult/Independent ReaderTanya Landman, I AM APACHE Picture BookAdam Rubin and illustrator Daniel Salmieri, THOSE DARN SQUIRRELS!
SFWA to Honor Victoria Strauss
Co-founder of the Writer Beware website (along with Ann Crispin) Victoria Strauss will be honored by Science Fiction Writers Association at their Nebula Awards with a special Service Award. Organization president Russell Davis comments, “Her work with Writer Beware has been invaluable to our members and the writing community at large, so I’m very pleased to offer her this recognition of her outstanding service.” Strauss says, “Ten years ago, when WB was just getting started, I could never have imagined how much we would accomplish and how far we’d come. Beginning as a two-person committee and a modest subsection of […]