Random Goes Direct Random House has quietly and recently launched a program that makes the company’s complete in print/in stock catalog of books — comprising over 20,000 titles — available for sale directly to readers through their web site. Spokesman Stuart Applebaum tells Lunch, “Our direct-to-consumer sales initiative through the Random House, Inc. website is a work-in-progress intentionally supplemental to our booksellers, about which we will have more to say in the future.” As Applebaum signals, the shopping cart feature is only obvious through the primary “Random House, Inc.” web site. Visitors to sub-sites for the individual publishing groups only […]

Google Gets Sued The Authors Guild has joined with individual authors Herbert Mitgang, Betty Miles and Daniel Hoffman (poet laureate of the US in 1973-74) to file suit against Google in a Manhattan Federal court yesterday over their Google Print for Libraries program. The parties seek class action status and allege in their complaint that Google “is engaging in massive copyright infringement at the expense of the rights of individual writers,” for “its own commercial use and the use of others.” Google has claimed its program constitutes protected “fair use” and replied yesterday, “We regret that this group has chosen […]

BAM Will File Late Books-A-Million announced after the close of the market yesterday that they will miss the required Federal filing date for their quarterly 10-Q report for the period ending July 30. They say it is “a result of management’s ongoing evaluation of the Company’s internal control over financial reporting for the second quarter. During the course of its evaluation, management identified material weaknesses as defined by Audit Standard No. 2 adopted by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. Management is working expeditiously to finalize its evaluation of internal control over financial reporting in order to file the Form […]

King Tops First Round of Auction The online auction for the right to name a character in Stephen King’s forthcoming book CELL yielded a winning bid of $25,100, with proceeds going to the First Amendment Project. The next highest winning bids in the first round of the auction included: Lemony Snicket ($6,350) Michael Chabon ($6,000) Amy Tan ($3,338.88) Peter Straub ($2,125) Jonathan Lethem ($2,025) Karen Jay Fowler ($1,853.88) And here are the leading bids so far in the second round of the auction: John Grisham ($7,940) Nora Roberts ($5,100) Neil Gaiman ($2,750) Brad Meltzer ($810) Dave Eggers ($761) AP NY […]

Personnel News Daniel Slager is leaving Harcourt to become editor in chief of Milkweed Editions, starting in mid-October, joining managing director Hilary Reeves as co-leader of the nonprofit literary publisher. Slager was selected from a field of 100 candidates. Before joining Harcourt in 2000, he was an editor at the Grand Street quarterly. Advanced Marketing Services (AMS) has named Jack Dollard as EVP and COO, “responsible for a broad range of activities in the company’s distribution centers, logistics, publishing, process improvement and corporate operations areas.” He previously ran JND Consulting in San Diego, and previously held executive positions at Gateway […]

Trying to Save Stores Downtown Washington bookstore Chapters celebrated its twentieth birthday yesterday, but the Washington Post notes the store is struggling to make it to the next birthday. Co-owners Terri Merz and Steve Moyer are pursuing an unusual strategy that could hold lessons for other independent stores: They want to sell the store to the nonprofit foundation Wordfest that they established in 2001 to sponsor the D.C. International Poetry Festival. The sums involved are quite modest. They need to raise approximately $80,000 to fund the purchase, and are hoping to elicit $50 contributions from 1,600 people. In order to […]