Canada’s Price Adjustments Canada continues to reckon with high printed book prices as a result of the decline of the US dollar. As consumer pressure continues, publishers are announcing plans to lower prices on backlist as well as new books. The Globe and Mail notes: “Most publishers have already made pricing changes with new books, or reprints, that have been printed recently, reducing the difference between the US and Canadian price to about 20 per cent. Book sellers say that markup is reasonable because of the higher costs of distributing books in Canada. [Amusingly, this is the same rationale offered […]

Book by High-Ranking Agent In Conflict with Tenet Resurfaces at Carroll & Graf Former CIA European operations chief Tyler Drumheller and former CIA director George Tenet have clashed in their respective accounts of when agency leaders and senior Administration officials became aware of the unreliability of intelligence provided by the Iraqi defector known as Curveball, as first outlined in a presidential commission’s report last year. Over the weekend the Washington Post added a front page story drawing on interviews with Drumheller that “add new detail about the CIA’s embrace of a source whose credibility was already unraveling” (and he was […]

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Director’s Take on Disney Has LA Talking Director M. Night Shyamalan makes news in LA for remarks in the forthcoming The Man Who Heard Voices as he “crucifies the top executives at the company he long had considered his artistic home since his 1999 surprise hit The Sixth Sense: Walt Disney Studios.” The LA Times say, “as galleys circulate around town, that more than anything else has people musing about just how fragile relationships between artists and executives can be.” Written by Michael Bamberger with Shyamalan’s “extensive participation,” Gotham indicates the director will help promote the book when it releases […]

BBC Sells to Random UK BBC Books has finally selected a partner for its book line, agreeing to sell a majority stake in the unit to Random House UK. As a result, BBC Books will become part of the Ebury division, run by publisher Fiona MacIntyre. BBC continues to have a stake in the unit, and will still “license relevant book publishing rights in BBC programs.” The deal also helps Random House come close to market share parity with Hachette, which passed Random as the UK’s largest publisher after the close of the Time Warner Book Group acquisition. Massachusetts Man […]

Ginna to Start Imprint at Bloomsbury Oxford University Press trade editorial director Peter Ginna is leaving the company in early July to become publisher and editorial director of a new imprint at Bloomsbury focusing on quality nonfiction. He starts at Bloomsbury in September, reporting to publisher Karen Rinaldi. Known for his American history list, among Ginna’s many authors are the winners of the 2005 and 2006 Pulitzers in history, Washington’s Crossing by David Hackett Fischer and Polio: An American Story by David M. Oshinsky. No specific plans for a launch date and annual title output have been set yet, though […]