Jump to navigation Skip to content
A month after signing a distribution deal with the Barnes & Noble eBookstore, online publishing platform Smashwords announced on Tuesday that it has reached a similar arrangement with Sony. Authors who upload their work to Smashwords through Sony’s new “Publisher Portal” can expect to see it added to the Sony e-book catalogue in as little as ten days, the company said.
About a week shy of its first anniversary, online magazine the Daily Beast is getting into the book business. On Monday, editor Tina Brown announced a joint venture with Perseus Books to release a series of short, topical e-books quickly followed by paperback editions. The new imprint, Beast Books, plans to publish three to five titles in the next year.
Two of the country’s most prominent newspapers announced significant changes to their book coverage last week. The Chicago Tribune not only reformatted its Saturday books page but officially launched Printers Row, a literary blog featuring expanded content and contributions from readers. The San Francisco Chronicle, meanwhile, scrapped its usual best-seller list on Sunday in favor of lists provided by the Northern California Independent Bookseller Association.
A panel of international writers has chosen Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude as the book that has most influenced world literature over the past twenty-five years. The survey, commissioned by international literary magazine Wasafiri, coincided with the release last Friday of the quarterly’s twenty-fifth anniversary issue.
Steve Rubin, best known as the publisher of John Grisham and Dan Brown, announced yesterday that he is stepping down as executive vice president and publisher-at-large of Random House, effective next Friday. The sixty-seven-year-old Rubin, a former journalist, said he was moving on to pursue other opportunities, including a book deal of his own with “one of the finest publishers in the industry.”
With support from several prominent American partners, Philips spinoff IREX Technologies entered the U.S. e-book market yesterday when it unveiled a device intended to compete directly with the Kindle and the Sony Reader. The IREX DR800SG, which features 3G wireless connectivity through Verizon and access to the recently launched Barnes & Noble eBookstore, will land in Best Buy stores late next month.
Four days after the Department of Justice recommended that a federal court in New York City reject the proposed Google Book Search settlement, the parties involved are asking for time to amend the agreement. The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, with support from Google, filed a motion yesterday seeking to postpone a hearing originally scheduled for October 7.
For the first time, the world’s most influential reader has given her blessing to a short story collection. Oprah Winfrey—whose imprimatur virtually guarantees best-seller status—announced last Friday that the sixty-third selection for her eponymous book club is the debut Say You’re One of Them (Little, Brown, 2008) by Nigerian author and Jesuit priest Uwem Akpan.
