The Japan Times looks at the long-term trend of a shrinking publishing business in Japan. (Note carefully that they include books, magazines and manga together in a single category.) With sales of approximately $18.365 billion annually (2.08 trillion yen) sales are falling about three percent a year, and are down 21 percent since 1996. Readership is dropping, and so are the number of sales outlets: “Hundreds of small and midsize bookstores have closed in recent years. The number of shops belonging to the Japan Booksellers Federation, a national industry group of bookstores selling newly published books, came to 5,869 in […]
Virgin Books Closes NY Comics Office
Virgin Books’ Comics unit–a partnership with India-based comics publisher Gotham Entertainment–will close its New York office and reorganize. Eight people have been laid off, citing the “the current macro-economic downturn,” but the companies hope to set up a new office in Los Angeles. Reuters notes: “The company launched in 2006 with Virgin Group chief Richard Branson, author Deepak Chopra and filmmaker Shekhar Kapur among its founders. It began by publishing comics inspired by Indian and Hindu mythology and then moved into a line known as Director’s Cut, which attempted to lure filmmakers into the comics world in hopes of subsequently […]
Designers Craft Digital Print Demo Book
Are you curious about the printing capabilities of digital printing? Prof. Frank Philippin at Hochschule Darmstadt in Germany and British designer James Goggin worked with graphic design students in a two-day workshop to create DEAR LULU, a test book that “acts as a calibration document for testing color, pattern, format, texture and typography. Exercises in color profile (Adobe RGB/sRGB/CMYK/Greyscale), halftoning, point size, line, geometry, skin tone, colour texture, cropping and print finishing provide useful data for other designers and self-publishers to judge the possibilities and quality of online print-on-demand — specifically Lulu.com, with this edition.” The book sells, via Lulu […]
Plus
* What does it mean for LibraryThing, now that Amazon is taking over Shelfari entirely, and will acquire an approximately 40 percent stake in LT once their acquisition of AbeBooks closes? The site opened itself up to user suggestions and feedback while pondering the possibilities, and the extensive discussion has well over 100 posts. Meanwhile, with various web stats showing user growth at both LibraryThing and Shelfari leveling off considerably, Tim O’Reilly writes on O’Reilly Radar “I’m a bit surprised that the articles have seemingly ignored the fact that Goodreads appears to be the market leader, at least based on […]
Amazon Takes Over Shelfari
Book social networking site Shelfari announced on their site that Amazon, which was an investor, is buying out the company: “As many of you may already know, Amazon has been a long supporter of Shelfari. They’ve worked closely with us as we introduced readers, like you, to our global community of book lovers…. And now Shelfari and Amazon will work hand in hand to continue to grow our dynamic community and create innovative new tools around the books you love. We’ve got some big plans ahead. With more resources and Amazon’s expertise in building a platform where people come to […]
Rosenman to Algonquin
Former Houghton Mifflin executive editor Jane Rosenman will join Algonquin as an editor starting after Labor Day. Publisher Elisabeth Scharlatt says, “What a great fit. Jane’s sensibility is so well suited to Algonquin’s list of fiction and narrative non-fiction.” In other personnel news, writer and TV performer Jo Unwin, 43, is joining Conville & Walsh as an agent focosing on books for children and teens, “looking to build a quality list of both British and international writers, and also a list handling brilliant American writers into the UK.” Unwin will also continue to scout film properties for Aardman Features (Wallce […]