As we previewed in our BEA piece last month, the convention has been working with the American Booksellers Association (ABA) to help “ease the economic challenges facing booksellers who wish to attend the 2009 trade show” and get more bookseller engagement at the main convention facility. (As we’ve noted in a variety of annual commentaries, the ABA has been pulling away from the center of the action.) Today they announced that BEA will “offer limited free convention attendance to ABA bookstore members.” The ABA’s coo Oren Teicher explains that “member stores will be receiving free passes to the show based […]
2008 Sales: Meyer the New Rowling
Stephenie Meyer sold over 15 million books in the US in 2008, and that’s just in outlets tracked by Nielsen Bookscan, where various editions of her books claimed 9 of the top 50 spots for the year. That total sale is millions of copies more than Rowling’s sales from books in to top last year, when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows tracked 7,740,000 units, and two other titles on the list gave her sales of 8.6 million copies. (NB, that doesn’t include other backlist editions that did not sell enough to make the top 50.) Meyer occupies 6 of […]
End of An Era: Book Clubs Abandon "Negative Option"
The book club giant comprising Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Guild, the Doubleday Book Club and all the rest of the former Bookspan–now renamed Booksonline, so I guess you know the new owners’ strategy–has given up the practice of shipping books to members who forget to tell them not to. “No books are shipped to members automatically anymore,” the announcement declares. “In this day and age of commercial overabundance and enlightened consumers armed with access to a boundless pool of information, it just couldn’t fly anymore.” The clubs now operate from www.bookclubs-online.com.Release
Author Solutions Buys Xlibris
Author Solutions, which already gobbled up competitor iUniverse, has now acquired Xlibris, too. The company says the combined lists now comprise almost 100,000 titles from 70,000 authors. CEO Kevin Weiss says “Xlibris brings a demonstrated expertise in marketing services, which perfectly complements the strength of AuthorHouse’s publishing and illustration services and iUniverse’s industry-leading editorial services. Both first-time and mid-list authors, writing in all genres, will find one of our brands offers the services they need to accomplish their publishing goals.” The addition brings takes their annual title count from about 12,000 up to 19,000, and still growing. Random House was […]
Indigo Launches Mobile Reading Initiative at CES
Canadian retailing giant Indigo is launching Shortcovers, their effort to stake out a dominant place in the “app-world” reading market, at the Consumer Electronics show. Launching in the US at the end of this month and in Canada shortly thereafter, the start-up is leveraging parent company Indigo’s relationships with publishers. (In a video interview with USA Today shown on the Shortcovers site, company cto Michael Serbinis has Marley & Me and The Snowball currently on his iPhone.) The system promises Kindlesque ease and variety of free sample chapters from books, along with other reading material including articles, news stories, speeches, […]
The February 2009 Indie Next List
Cutting for Stone: A Novel by Abraham VergheseLittle Bee: A Novel by Chris CleaveThe Help: A Novel by Kathryn StockettThe School of Essential Ingredients: A Novel by Erica BauermeisterDog on It: A Chet and Bernie Mystery by Spencer QuinnThe Leisure Seeker: A Novel by Michael ZadoorianHotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet: A Novel by Jamie FordAddition: A Novel by Toni JordanIrreplaceable: A Novel by Stephen LovelyHands of My Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love by Myron UhlbergThe Mighty Queens of Freeville: A Mother, a Daughter, and the Town that Raised Them by […]