BookSurge Adds a Few Hundred Thousand Books to Amazon Catalog The title count of new books published this year just took an exponential jump: BookSurge has partnered with Ancestry.com to create almost 280,000 on-demand books, called the Our Name in History series, priced at $29.95 and running 98 pages. They chronicle the most common last names from Ancestry.com’s archive, “using historical records dating from the 1600s to provide a blend of interesting facts, statistics and commentary” to create “keepsakes about either their own last name or that of their favorite actor, president or media mogul.” This afternoon another large-scale print-on-demand […]

Deal News FICTION Debut Dave Boling’s GUERNICA, a sweeping epic of love, family, and war set in the tiny Basque town of Guernica before, during, and after its destruction by the German Luftwaffe on the eve of World War II, to Karen Rinaldi and Lindsay Sagnette at Bloomsbury, by Kim Witherspoon at Inkwell Management (NA). Declan Burke’s THE BIG O, in which a stick-up artist finds herself involved in a kidnapping scheme, from an author described as “Elmore Leonard with a harder Irish edge,” to Stacia Decker at Harcourt, by Marsha Swan at Hag’s Head Press. Writers Notes Magazine’s Notable […]

Sales Top Titles Lift S&S Simon & Schuster continues a strong streak of sales and earnings growth with reported third-quarter sales of $214 million, up 9 percent, “principally reflecting higher sales from top-selling titles” such as the The Secret and Joel Osteen’s BECOME A BETTER YOU. Operating income rose six percent, to $21.6 million, impaired in part by “higher royalty expenses, employee-related costs, volume-driven advertising and selling expenses and digital archive costs.” In this morning’s conference call, ceo Leslie Moonves said they had made “steady progress in the digital warehouse project” and noted “by year-end we expect to have 13,000 […]

Harlequin Slightly Up Down Sales at Harlequin were down 2.5 percent to $115.7 million (CA) due to the weakened dollar, though “underlying” sales were up $.7 million absent currency fluctuations. North American retail was up slightly while direct-to-consumer was down slightly, and overseas sales were up slightly. Even with the currency issues, profits rebounded 12.5 percent, to $16.3 million. Torstar Release Indigo Keeps Rolling Indigo continues its strong performance, with second quarter sales up 14.8 percent, to $209 million (CA). Same-store sales were up more than 10 percent throughout the chain, and their online store grew 50 percent, to $26 […]

Noted — Junot Diaz won the John Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize for THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO. — At Abebooks.com coo Boris Wertz is “transitioning” to a new job with majority shareholder Burda Digital Ventures, creating a Vancouver-based venture capital business that will target consumer Internet investment opportunities in the Pacific Northwest. Wertz will remain on the AbeBooks board and continue to advise the company. The senior management team is being revised as a result, with Laura-Lea Berna promoted to vp of operations; Shaun Jamieson promoted to director of sales and account management, and president of subsidiary […]

Paolini to Expand Bestselling Series The third book in Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance series will be published on September 23, 2008, Knopf Children’s announced this morning. Originally envisioned as a trilogy, Paolini is expanding the story into a fourth book. He says in the announcement: “I plotted out the Inheritance series as a trilogy nine years ago, when I was fifteen. At that time, I never imagined I’d write all three books, much less that they would be published. When I finally delved into Book Three, it soon became obvious that the remainder of the story was far too big to […]