Chicago has selected Tom Wolfe’s THE RIGHT STUFF as their 15th citywide reading selection. The pick coincides with the 50th anniversary of both NASA and Chicago’s Air and Water Show.Sun-Times
Archives for July 2008
Chinese Printers Are Censoring Books for Export
Two Australian publishers report incidents of censorship by Chinese printers of their books. A printer company in Guangdong in southern China informed the UNSW Press after their book was printed that “Chinese authorities have found sentences within the text which infringe their sovereignty and have refused to grant an export authorization.” (There was a reference to the “China-Tibet border” in a biography by Felicity Jack.) And Hardie Grant reports “a similar problem with a reference book being printed in Hong Kong for an international market after it was advised to remove a picture of the Dalai Lama.”SMH
Book Country Returns to New York
The abandoned New York is Book Country has been resuscitated by Nielsen Business Media, as pointed out in this month’s Publishing Trends. To be held September 21 in Central Park (one week after the Brooklyn Book Festival, and one week before the National Book Festival in DC), the new version highlights books and authors but also promises pavilions for electronic gaming, cooking, finance, and hybrid autos, plus a music pavilion, making New York…cornucopia country?NYCB site
How About WOWIO 2.0?
Remember that goofy company that wanted to build a collection of free-access ebooks that wasted all that money a couple of BEA’s ago on an army of people in matching t-shirts chasing attendees on Segway scooters? Now entertainment company Platinum Studios (which says they control thousands of comic book characters) has bought the company and relaunched the site. They say that “prior to the acquisition and relaunch, WOWIO had over 2 million downloads in a year,” with partners including Rosetta Books, Taylor & Francis Group, and Soft Skull.Release
Personnel News and More
Sarah Melnyk has joined St. Martin‘s Minotau as a senior publicist. She was previously at Harcourt. At Yale University Press, Jean Thomson Black has been promoted to executive editor. She works in the areas of science, medicine, and technology. Distributor Consortium will offer free freight terms to trade accounts beginning August 1. With this change, accounts will receive the same discount terms when ordering from Perseus Books, Perseus Distribution Services (PDS), Publishers Group West (PGW), or Consortium.
S&S Falls Short
CBS reported sales at Simon & Schuster for the second quarter of $186 million, down 7 percent from a year ago. It’s the third straight quarterly decline for the publishing unit and once again the statement says that “bestselling titles…did not match contributions from prior year titles.” OIBDA and operating income decreased 15 percent to $17 million and 19 percent to $14.6 million, respectively, with “lower revenues partially offset by lower royalty expenses.” In additional remarks the company indicated they “are also feeling, as we did the last quarter, the effects of higher freight costs,” and are seeing higher paper […]