Puerto Rico

FaithWords, the Christian division of Hachette Book Group, has entered into a publishing partnership with Casa Creación—the Spanish-language imprint of Charisma House, Charisma Media's book division—to broaden the reach of its authors. Hachette will handle the U.S. Spanish market, while Casa's focus will be Puerto Rico and the rest of the Spanish-speaking world.

In talks since July's International Christian Retail Show in Orlando, Fla., the two publishers signed an agreement this month to work together.

You walk into the bookstore, past the tables of "Books for This Month's Holiday," and find your way to the Foreign Language section. Bring up your bébé in French; speak Chinese like a Tiger Mom; have a conversation in Russian that would warm the cockles of Putin's heart—it's all here. And if you already know a foreign language—Spanish, say—you'll also find novels and self-help books right next to "500 Spanish Verbs."

Puerto Rico-based prof's system will enforce textbook purchase, reduce piracy. Enlarge / Professor Vogel's new patent, if licensed widely, would compel students to prove that they've purchased a digital textbook. In a newly-approved patent, an economics professor hopes to bring to the academic publishing world what seems to be forthcoming in the video game industry—new restrictions that would seemingly eliminate a secondary market for digital goods and prevent legal borrowing. Last week, the 2006 patent for a “Web-based system and method to capture and distribute royalties for access to copyrighted academic texts by preventing unauthorized access to discussion boards

From the press release: Santillana USA, the world’s leader in Spanish language publishing, announced a 78% increase in e-book sales for the November 2011-January 2012 period. This increase, which corresponds to the United Sates and Puerto Rico alone, has been the biggest recorded by the company since it started offering titles in a digital format. Record breaking [...]

DJM Realty has been retained to exclusively manage the disposition of all remaining Borders Group and Waldenbooks real estate in the United States.

"Finding Independents," is a new column that focuses on the issues affecting smaller and independent publishers. In the inaugural article, humorist Laurie Notaro discusses the success she found with iUniverse.com and its print-on-demand (POD) offerings. Rebecca Churilla: How did the idea for the Idiot Girls Adventure Club come to you? Would you have been able to publish the book had it not been for the capabilities offered by POD? Laurie Notaro: I wrote Idiot Girls seven years ago. It's a collection of first-person narratives, all true stories, that I wrote for my weekly humor column at Arizona State University's student newspaper, State Press.