BEA has rescheduled their “CEO Panel” discussion to make it the opening session on the morning of Tuesday, May 25 (the conference day before the show floor is open to all). For the first time, it will be the opening event for both the American Bookseller Association’s day of meetings as well as BEA’s own Big Ideas conference, bringing booksellers and the rest of the trade together in the room. Farrar, Straus publisher Jonathan Galassi will moderate a discussion of the Value of A Book, featuring: New Workman group publisher Bob MillerICM evp Esther NewbergIngram ceo Skip PrichardPenguin USA ceo […]
Oxford Launches Vertical Web Guides
Oxford University Press has launched an ambitious set of “ultimate online reading lists” under the banner of Oxford Bibliographies Online. With 50 to 100 entries per subject area–launching with sections on Classics, Islamic Studies, Criminology and Social Work, and adding ten to 12 new areas over the next year–the effort exerts the power of vetted curation over the confusion of the ever-exploding web. It’s a paid service, available for $29.95 a month. Oxford has drawn on hundreds of scholars to create an editorial board and editor-in-chief for each subject area. Each entry “provides expert recommendations through key literature on a […]
Some iBookstore Pricing Data
The folks at O’Reilly Media have ingested and arranged pricing data from the iBookstore for the top 50 sellers across the 21 subject categories. Lo and behold, the mean price the for top 10 bestsellers is a $10.66. In the highest-priced bracked, for titles ranked 21 through 30, the median price moves up to $11.81. In the fiction categories, which typically lead ebook bestseller lists, average prices for the top 10 titles in the categories look like this:Fiction & Literature: $11.84Mysteries & Thrillers: $11.02Romance: $8.64Sci-Fi & Fantasy: $9.16 The highest mean prices are found consistently in “cookbooks, food & wine,” […]
People, Etc.
Colin Fox will join Hyperion as executive editor next week, focusing on investigative journalism, politics, sports, pop culture, business, adventure, humor and general narrative nonfiction. He has been a senior editor at Simon & Schuster. Juliet Grames will join Soho Press as an editor on May 3. Most recently she was an editor at The Overlook Press. Random House announced three corporate appointments today. To fill Nina von Moltke’s old position they have promoted Ranjana Wingender to director, corporate development, continuing to report to ceo Markus Dohle. (She has been director, corporate projects.) Moving up in the same department is […]
Looking Past the Ashes to BEA
Portions of Scottish airspace continue to open, though even with the newly-established flying zones London’s airports remain closed until at least 6 PM London time today. (Limited trans-Atlantic flights have resumed at other continental airports in such cities as Paris and Amsterdam.) The US Ambassador in London told the White House he estimates that approximately 40,000 Americans are stranded in Britain. When White House spokesman Robert Gibbs was asked if the US would follow the example of the UK’s Royal Navy and try to bring citizens home by boat, he replied, “We’ve got some big ships, but that would be […]
People, Etc.
Nigel Roby, managing director of UK trade magazine The Bookseller, has reached an agreement “in principle” to buy the property from Nielsen. The magazine says that “negotiations are expected to conclude at the end of April. All the editorial, sales and marketing and events teams will remain in place.” At Wiley, Steve Miron is being promoted to svp of the STMS (scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly) division, effective May 1. He has been chief operating officer there since the announcement last October that Eric Swanson will retire in October 2010. Until that time, Swanson will serve as svp, government relations […]