Getting Ready for BEA The AP files their pre-BEA story, viewing the convention through the lens of TWBG head Larry Kirshbaum, since this will be his last convention as the head of the company. Looking back 30 years ago he recalls: “It was really a kind of floating party from suite to suite among people who were friends. It was a much more collegial business, without the pressure everyone has now from being with a publicly held company.” The AP adds: “Industry officials debate the necessity of BookExpo America, but Kirshbaum is among the believers, hoopla and all. He has […]

Important PublishersMarketplace Update As you may have noticed, we experienced a major hardware failure at the site towards the end of yesterday afternoon. The effect was unfortunately compounded by a “perfect storm” of negligence at our hosting company with our automated daily back up system. The good news is that the site was back up within hours, and all of our features and databases are fully functional. The bad news is that certain data pieces from much of May are still being recovered and reloaded, and parts of this process could take a while. Some member items, particularly tracker history […]

Eric Yang Takes Over to RH Asia As Chi Leaves Random House’s Asian star Y.S. Chi is stepping down from his position as the founding head of Random House Asia, exhausted from “the tremendous personal physical toll of his constant round-trip travel from New York” and in response to a recent request from one of his daughters to spend more time close to home. Chi will keep seats on the boards of the Random House Kodansha and Random House JoongAng joint ventures, and will take a job outside the book business. Random CEO Peter Olson comments, “Y.S. leaves us with […]

Eric Yang Takes Over to RH Asia As Chi Leaves Random House’s Asian star Y.S. Chi is stepping down from his position as the founding head of Random House Asia, exhausted from “the tremendous personal physical toll of his constant round-trip travel from New York” and in response to a recent request from one of his daughters to spend more time close to home. Chi will keep seats on the boards of the Random House Kodansha and Random House JoongAng joint ventures, and will take a job outside the book business. Random CEO Peter Olson comments, “Y.S. leaves us with […]

Behold Our Tiny Booth: 3173 At this year’s BEA the entire operation of PublishersMarketplace.com and Publishers Lunch will squeeze itself into one very modest 10 x 10 booth. Our primary attraction will be a small computer and a large and handsome screen, so that you can view a demonstration of our site and follow show news as we post it. We will also feature a very large piece of canvas, decorated with very large reproductions of our logos. We’ll have actual copies of our DEAL BOOK: 2004 for your perusal, along with our special DEAL BOOK: BEA EDITION, which is […]

AAUP Pops Quiz on Google Print for Libraries Questions about — and potential objections to — Google’s ambitious program to scan and index online the contents of major academic libraries have moved to a new level with the publication online by Business Week of a letter dated last Friday from Association of American University Presses executive director Peter Givler to Google senior counsel Alexander Macgillivray. Givler says the public posting of the letter “was a complete surprise.” While noting his members were initially enthusiastic about Google Print, Givler cites “mounting alarm and concern” over the library scanning program, saying it […]