In New York at the Digital Book World Conference, the Four Horsemen rode onto the center stage. But predictions of imminent apocalypse were likely overstated. One path to short-term salvation for the book business may be the pot of gold at the end of the Apple e-books...
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. The 2014 deal for Hachette to purchase Perseus eventually fell apart, but the parties announced this week they’re ready for “take two” on the deal. On Tuesday, Hachette – the publisher of novelists Donna Tartt and...
This week, President Obama nominated Carla Hayden to become the 14th Librarian of Congress. The selection follows the January retirement of James Billington, a Reagan appointee who came to office in 1987. Hayden will replace David Mao, who currently serves as the...
Ernest Hemingway spent many years in Cuba and was living there when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. He told a Cuban television reporter at the time that he was proud to be the first cubano sato to be a Nobel laureate. Hemingway of course knew some...
When is a book not a book? This week, that riddle has two possible answers. A book is not a book when it’s an e-book, of course. When the Hachette Book Group reported their fourth quarter results this week, e-book sales fell year over year, and now make up 22 percent...
Books are the longstanding foundation of Amazon’s e-commerce retailing experience. Last fall, ahead of the holiday shopping season, Amazon moved beyond one-click shopping and opened its first brick-and-mortar bookstore in Seattle. This week, signs pointed to many more...
At the American Booksellers Association’s Winter Institute meeting this week in Denver, indie booksellers heard their online nemesis Amazon branded a monopolist and a tax evader. Douglas Preston, who has led the Authors United movement to force the Dept of Justice to...
On Wednesday, January 27, in Washington, the New America think tank plans an open discussion on “Amazon’s Book Monopoly : A Threat to Freedom of Expression?” with author Scott Turow and Smashwords founder Mark Coker,” among others. New America says it is “committed to...
The 38th parallel dividing the Korean peninsula is not the only line Suki Kim has ever crossed. An award-winning novelist and a journalist, Kim emigrated with her family from Seoul to New York City when she was 13. Over a number of officially sanctioned visits to...
The new year has opened quietly for the book world, but particularly in the e-book market. Barring the unexpected, 2016 sizes up as a period uninterrupted by game-changing new devices and disruptive business models. Even in these tranquil times, though, the winds of...
