Time Regained Eco Back in Italy, Dahl Redux in Spain, and Harry Potter Everywhere Else Umberto Eco is at it again. Romance, that is. His fourth such novel to date — featuring the picaresque adventures of the title character, Baudolino — has hit the stands in Italy, and we’re told its pages are bursting with…Continue Reading
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Tagged Armistead Maupin, Bad Heir Day, Ballantine, Baudolino, Bompiani, Byblos, Carol Heaton, Colin Forbes, Curtis Brown, David Higham Associates, Diogenes, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Fayard, Fine Line Feature, Fremd, Gallimard, Greene & Heaton, Harcourt, Harry Potter, Headline UK, Hedwig Janes, Heyne, Hillary Clinton, In the Congo, James Hillman, Jane Rotrosen, Jonathan Lloyd, Katherine Neville, Knopf, La Repubblica, Last Refuge, Lost Innocents, Love Letter for Mary, Mother's Lover, Oprah, Pastures Nouveaux, Patricia MacDonald, Plume, Prix Goncourt, Racism Explained to My Daughter, Random House, Rhinoceros, Roald Dahl, Seuil, Simon & Schuster, Superzorro, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Tatler magazine, That Blinding Absence of Light, The Eight, The Force of Character, The Mail on Sunday, The Night Listener, The Sacred Night, The Unknown, Umberto Eco, Urs Widmer, Wendy Holden
As the year drew to a close in Germany, so did the long-running speculation about who would pick up the venerable Heyne Verlag, which for years was subject to rumors about an imminent sale to one of the four major players in the country: Bertelsmann, Holtzbrinck, Bonnier, and in the end the winning bidder for…Continue Reading
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Tagged August Fischer, Axel Springer, BarnesandNoble.com, Bertelsmann, Bonnier, Christian Strasser, Cora, Droemer-Weltbild, Econ Ullstein List, Goldmann, Harlequin, Heyne, Heyne Ullstein, Holtzbrinck, Kirch Group, Marcella Berger, Mathias Dpfner, Peter Olson, Random House Germany, Rolf Heyne, Rowohlt, S. Fischer, Simon & Schuster
Not surprisingly, 1999 — a year which occurred in that surreal interlude before anyone could imagine the impact of April 2000’s dot-com dump — was a year when everything came up “e”. And, as we glance at our prognostications of last year, we find that Publishing Trends exhorted publishers to embrace the opportunities that were…Continue Reading
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Tagged Amazon.com, Bertelsmann, Business Week, Elmore Leonard, Frederick Forsyth, Industry Standard, Inside.com, Publisherslunch.com, PW Daily, Random House, Stephen King, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Variety, Variety.com
This was supposed to have been the year of the e-book, though judging from the hype and early sales, it might be safer to call it the year of the book, period. After scanning the evolving e-publishing landscape, PT’s panel of industry experts has selected the most interesting electronic publishing events of 2000, offered herewith…Continue Reading
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Tagged eBay, EBX, Electronic Book Exchange, Fatbrain, Frankfurt-Whitaker, HarperCollins, Henry Yuen, Holtzbrinck, IDG, Inside.com, Joel Fishman, John Wiley, Kip Parent, Lightning, Microsoft, MightyWords, Open eBook Forum, Oppenheimer Funds, Publisherslunch.com, Questia, Random House, RCA, Rightscenter.com, Sprout, Stanford University Press, Subrights.com, TV Guide, Ziff-Davis
It’s strap in and launch time for the three most prominent contenders in the world of author-focused websites. To wit: AuthorsOnTheWeb.com, another node on Carol Fitzgerald’s Book Report Network, expects to go live by December 11; PreviewPort.com, an author portal headed by novelist Susan Bergman, is set to roll out an e-book store, and hopes…Continue Reading
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Tagged AuthorsOnline.com, Authorsontheweb.com, Book Report Network, Bowker, Carol Fitzgerald, Frank McCourt, HarperCollins, Joshua Horwitz, M.J. Rose, PreviewPort.com, Susan Bergman
Agents Sound Off on New Media Given their relatively negligible treatment in the media coverage of the e-book biz over the past few months, you could reasonably conclude that literary agents are mere bystanders (or at best, nagging backseat drivers) in the mad dash to forge a viable new-media publishing model. Below, two agents respond…Continue Reading
Book Packagers Make the Best of a Worst-Case Scenario “The advantage of working with packagers,” says Mark Magowan, associate publisher at Abrams, “is that when the math of a series goes down, you don’t have to fire your own staff.” Though Magowan may be grinning as he says it, it’s no joke that book packagers…Continue Reading
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Tagged 17th Street Productions, Abrams, Al Lowman, Alloy Online, American Whole Health, Aqua Erotica, B&N.com, Bertelsmann, Book Soup, Bookspan, Broadway Books, Cader Books, Charles Melcher, Chronicle, Crown, Dan Weiss, David Borgenicht, Gruner + Jahr, Home Depot, Home Improvement 1-2-3, Jack Kerouac, Judith Joseph, Julia Molino, Kraft No Oven Summer Sensations, LiveReads, Mark Magowan, Melcher Media, Meredith, Michael Cader, Orpheus Emerged, Publisherslunch.com, Reader's Digest, Rebus, Rizzoli, Rodney Friedman, Roundtable Press, Soapdish Editions, Susan Meyer, The Amazing Book of Paper Boats, Three Rivers Press, Time Inc., Time Warner, UC Berkeley Wellness Letter, Van Nostrand Reinhold, WholeHealthMD, Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT INSIDE.COM (12/6/00) When Stephen King pulled the plug last week on his online serial story The Plant, citing a dwindling base of readers willing to pony up a buck for the latest installment, pundits rushed to declare electronic self-publishing dead on arrival. But many of them failed to notice that King’s supposed…Continue Reading
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Tagged B&N.com, Bertelsmann, BMG Direct, Book Club Associates, Book-of-the-Month Club, Bookspan, Christian Friege, eMarketing Strategy, Literary Guild, Markus Wilhelm, Neal Goff, Reader's Digest, Ruth Stevens, Stephen King, The Plant, Time Warner, William Zinsser
17th Street Productions Takes On Hollywood What do you get when you take a teen-oriented book packager, implant a Silicon Alley–style “convergence media business model,” and throw in a few Hollywood film options? As Leslie Morgenstein, president of 17th Street Productions, puts it, “We’re becoming a multimedia company rather than a book packager,” and that…Continue Reading
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Tagged 17th Street Productions, Alloy, Alloy.com, Ann Brashares, CCS, Columbia TriStar, Dan Weiss, Fearless, Francine Pascal, Greenblatt Janollari Studio, HarperCollins, Leslie Morgenstein, Penguin Putnam, Pocket, Random House, Simon & Schuster, Storyline Entertainment, The Black Book: Diaries of a Teenage Stud
Though there were e-items all over the Frankfurt Book Fair, and a press release from the fair went so far as to assert that 75% of all companies exhibiting had some e-thing on display, there was not a lot to get excited about — except, that is, the Anglo-American newcomer, eSubstance. In a sleek booth…Continue Reading
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Tagged 3i, Adrian Sington, Bertelsmann, Boxtree, Carlton Books, Copyright Direct, Earl Spenser, eSubstance, Hishaam Mufti-Bey, iCollector, iSyndicate, Jeffrey o"rourke, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Mothercare, PublishOne, Screaming Media, Tankee Book Peddlar, Tesco, Themestream, Vesta, Vignette, WQED
