The direct-sale start-up OR Books, founded by John Oakes and Colin Robinson, announced their inaugural title yesterday–which just happens to share some striking similarities with another prominent forthcoming release. OR Books is issuing GOING ROUGE: Sarah Palin, An American Nightmare on November 17, the same day when HarperCollins publishes GOING ROGUE: An American Life by Sarah Palin. Comprising essays assembled by Nation editors Richard Kim and Betsy Reed, it promises “progressive perspectives on Sarah Palin’s political career” by writers including Naomi Klein, Jane Mayer, Katha Pollitt, Jim Hightower, Christopher Hayes, Gloria Steinem, Joe Conason, and Tom Frank. Harper had […]
Briefs: Target Joins Price War, and BN Prepares Nook
A couple of noteworthy but ultimately short stories. Target joined the pre-order bestseller price war, though in more limited fashion. They’re matching Walmart.com’s $8.99 offer with free shipping included, but on just six November pre-order titles. Boulder Bookstore buyer Arsen Kashkashian has suggested via Twitter that fellow indies cancel their publisher pre-orders on these deep-discounted forthcoming titles and take advantage of their competitors’ loss leaders. Bookstores will save money, he reasons, while helping Amazon and Walmart.com lose more. And Barnes & Noble’s afternoon media event suffered another pre-announcement leak–this time from the bookseller itself. An ad in next Sunday’s NYT […]
People
Sub rights director at FSG and Holt Denise Cronin will move over to become directior of sub rights for the Random House Publishing Group in November. At Dial Press, Noah Eker has been promoted to editor. Michael Healy has officially stepped down from his post as executive director of the Book Industry Study Group (where he was working half-time) to work full-time on preparations to establish the Book Rights Registry.
Internet Archive Proposes Universal Book Search Plan
Searching for and within books on the internet is pretty much of a mess right now, and only getting messier. While Google aspires to serve and protect everyone’s ebook files from the cloud some day, so far even the search giant has favored the proprietary rules of Google Book Search over truly becoming the “Google of book search.” Into that void steps one of Google’s primary antagonists of the moment, the Internet Archive. Leapfrogging their own work-in-progress database the Open Library, the IA has been debuting their concept for BookServer, envisioned as “a new architecture using common open standards that […]
Pearson OK at Q3
In one of those UK “trading updates” that doesn’t disclose actual data, Pearson tells investors the company is “trading ahead of expectations” so far this fiscal year and raised its earnings guidance a few pence, to “at or above 60 pence a share” for the full year. Primarily, the pound has stayed weak enough against the dollar and the company has “outperformed the US schools market.” At Penguin, currency neutral sales are down 4 percent, but with the weak pound actual sales are up 12 percent “as the expected tough retail market conditions were largely offset by a good publishing […]
Cash-Starved Weinsteins Switch Book Operation to Perseus Joint Venture
Weinstein Books, which has published a modest output since its founding in 2007 while the larger would-be Weinstein empire has run through its cash, is switching from an independent imprint to a joint venture with Perseus Books as of December 1. The model follows the deal recently struck between Perseus and the Weinstein’s erstwhile partner Tina Brown, now at The Beast. The two companies will “jointly develop new book ideas and Perseus will be responsible for all JV staff and for executing all core-publishing activities.” Perseus will also take over distribution of the Weinstein Books backlist. Weinstein Books publisher Judy […]