PEOPLE ROUNDUP Seven people have been laid off from Kaplan, including Director of National Accounts, Bill Huelster (who may be reached at bhuelster [at] gmail.com) and Yulia Borodyanskaya, International Sales and Subsidiary Rights (yborodyanskaya [at] yahoo.com). Kaplan is moving the selling responsibility to its distributor, Simon & Schuster, and Mary Dolan, Executive Director of Sales,…Continue Reading
Back by popular demand, Australia’s second annual Books Alive promotion — a two-week, federally-funded, book-buying bonanza — kicked off last month as Australian Minister for the Arts and Sport Rod Kemp officially pronounced the campaign’s motto: “lose yourself in a book and find yourself in a bookstore.” During the two week period ending August 15,…Continue Reading
With trusty correspondents fanned out over the big-box landscape this October, word comes back that while bestsellers and brand names are alive and well, who controls those brands varies depending on the venue. At Sam’s Club, for instance, the publisher of record for Williams-Sonoma is Simon & Schuster (The Williams-Sonoma Collection), while at Costco, it’s…Continue Reading
“Not your father’s New Age,” trade rag New Age Retailer’s current marketing tagline, was the message being touted at the 2003 International New Age Trade Show (INATS) West on June 28-30 at the Denver Merchandise Mart. What began as a metaphysical and jewelry show in 1996 has grown three times in size to its current…Continue Reading
Random Redux, Freese Helms PGW: Client Distribution Biz Jostles and Grows Don Fehr, nearly a year into his tenure as Director of Smithsonian Books, needed a distribution fix. The august publishing concern (formerly Smithsonian Institution Press) was gunning for trade sales growth — aiming to reverse its mix of 80% academic and 20% trade-bound titles…Continue Reading
Ingram Book Group Scans for Growth, As Rivals Grab Core Market Share The last decade must have felt a little like the spin-cycle hit Ingram Industries Inc., that constellation of “books, boats, and bad drivers” (as one wag has put it) that began as an old-economy barging concern and now controls a large share of…Continue Reading
PEOPLE Two major magazine publishers announce new hires: Linda Cunningham, most recently Publisher of Questia Media, has been named Editor-in-Chief of Meredith Books in Des Moines. . . Sara Levinson has been named to the newly created position of President of the Women’s Group at Rodale. She will oversee magazines, books, and websites in this…Continue Reading
Publishers Scrimmage Amid Dwindling Mass Market Suppliers The idiom of mass market book sales pops with so much merchandisers’ slang you could almost mistake it for a new extreme sport. You got your “lane blockers,” your “waterfalls,” your “power wings” and “gravity sleeves.” There are “clip strips” dangling product ready-to-hand, and “candyless checkouts” cheered by…Continue Reading
The Streets of London Cumming Goes Undercover, More Fodder for Potter, and Delahunt Reaches for the Orange With all eyes focusing intently on the latest deals from the London Book Fair, we thought we’d swivel the periscope toward what’s hitting the stores this summer in the UK. For starters, Charles Cumming’s A Spy By Nature…Continue Reading
