The Gobble Gap Please expect no more regular Lunch until next Tuesday, except for the weekly deal round-up. News and news clips will be posted at the PublishersMarketplace.com home page, so check in there if you like. As always, all the other site functions — deals, job board, databases, etc. — will continue at their usual pace. Have a happy thanksgiving. Personnel News Following the departure of Jean Feiwel, Scholastic has hired Andrea Davis Pinkney as publisher, hardcover and early childhood, starting in early December and reporting to Trade Publishing and Book Fair president Lisa Holton. (Pinkney was publisher of […]

Sheehan’s Book Lands This Week “Peace mom” Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq who has drawn attention for her campaign against the war, has written a book that is being issued by Hawaii’s Koa Books on Wednesday. It’s the first book from the press, which says they have printed 20,000 copies to start. Founder Arnie Kotler (also the founding director of Parallax Press) intends to focus on books “on personal transformation, progressive politics, and native cultures.” The AP reports, “Sheehan, who met Kotler through a mutual friend, said she accepted Kotler’s offer rather than work with […]

Monday, November 21 If for some reason this has reached you even though you are not a paying member of PublishersMarketplace, please visit the link below to join us all the time for complete deal reports and more. Click to register http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/register.shtml Deal Reports Just e-mail to deals@PublishersMarketplace if you aren’t using the online form linked below. Report a deal using the online form The Key As usual, the handy key to our Lunch deal categories. While all reports are always welcome, those that include a category will generally receive a higher listing when it comes time to put them […]

BAM’s Loss Is As Expected Books-a-Million (BAM) lost under $1 million in their fiscal third quarter, a slight improvement over a year ago, on sales of $108 million, which were up just 0.6 percent on a same-store basis compared to a year ago. Ironically, though the company blamed the bad hurricane sales for weak performance when downgrading projections in late September, they still benefited from “insurance recoveries for three stores that were permanently damaged by hurricanes during last fiscal year.” BAM release BN Leads Big Chains for Third Quarter For their third quarter, Barnes & Noble slightly exceeded previous projections […]

Doubleday Gets Riverhead Duo, to Set Up New Division Cindy Spiegel and Julie Grau will leave Penguin’s Riverhead, where they have served as co-publishers since 2003 (and worked as editors since the imprint’s founding in 1995), to start a new division for Doubleday Broadway beginning on November 28. Both will hold the title of svp and publisher, but they will report to Doubleday Broadway editor-in-chief Bill Thomas. The line, expected to grow to comprise 30 hardcovers and 40 trade paperbacks annually, “will reflect their philosophy of publishing a focused mix of literary fiction and quality nonfiction titles that perform as […]

Amazon’s Newest Patent Play Amazon continues to be aggressive in defining and protecting intellectual property. The e-tailer was recently awarded a patent for many elements of encouraging and allowing customers to post online reviews, including the very process of using a Web site to fill out a review form. Internet News reports it also covers “encouraging consumers to write reviews of items they’ve purchased by determining the optimal times to send them e-mails or reminders,” and “in one embodiment of the patent, the system sends consumers a message inviting them to write a review in a predetermined amount of time […]