Time Inc.
Scholastic, the global children’s publishing, education and media company, today announced an agreement with Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, one of the leading publishers of children’s books, to offer a selection of their popular titles on Storia®, the classroom-based, teacher-recommended ereading app for kids. The collection of books, from picture books to young adult novels, will be available for purchase by teachers and parents on Storia, through Scholastic Book Clubs and Scholastic Book Fairs beginning in late Spring 2013.
In 1999, a young writer named Jenny Offill published a debut novel called “Last Things,” about a young child being home-schooled by a mother who is slowly going insane. The New York Times called the book, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, “remarkable,” and The Los Angeles Times made Ms. Offill a finalist for its award to new writers.
Then Ms. Offill essentially retreated for 13 years.
Books — staid and intellectual cultural artifacts that they so often are — were not all just staid or intellectual this year. Not nearly. There were, in fact, scandals, at least a few of them surrounding books and their authors and publishers, and there were times in which discussions of books and the business grew dramatic and tension-filled. Near-scandals! Other times, these conversations were simply very, very interesting, full of twists and turns, much like a good book.
We know that Barnes & Noble has the technology to process ebook transactions in its stores, and with a new holiday promotion the company announced Thursday, we’re seeing more ways that technology can work. Between December 20 and 24, customers who go to a Barnes & Noble physical store and buy an ebook from a list of 20 qualifying ebooks — including The Hobbit, Life of Pi and the entire Hunger Games trilogy – can “instant-gift” another ebook on that list for free.
Selling directly to consumers is often viewed as an afterthought in this business, almost the sole province of niche publishers who can leverage brand recognition within their niche.
Last week at the Publishing Technology Executive Exchange in New York, Brian Holding, CEO of Champaign, Ill.-based publisher Human Kinetics, made a compelling case for why all publishers need to hone in on this area of their business.
The Hobbit earned nearly $85 million in theaters this weekend, setting a new record for December box office performance.
Capitalizing on Hobbit-mania, Tor/Forge Books played a book trailer for The Wheel of Time series before The Hobbit in some theaters. A Memory of Light comes out January 8, 2013, the fourteenth and final book in Robert Jordan‘s beloved Wheel of Time series.
It’s tempting to see such Technicolor absurdity as targeted more toward the adults—the sort of adults who buy avant-garde picture books, at least—than the children. And it is tempting to see it as a weird aberration in a section of the bookstore that, when you’re combing the shelves, trying to find a single non-awful book for a preschool birthday present, can seem insistently, intentionally boring. But neither is true. The picture book genre has always been a breeding ground for anarchic absurdism.
If there’s one thing every self-published author yearns for, it’s to be reviewed alongside traditionally published books, but for most that’s a dream that is unlikely to come true. Book reviewers, whether for traditional book review columns or book blogs, frequently don’t accept submissions from self-published authors. Instead, there’s a web of professional relationships between traditional publishers and reviewers which keeps the books and the reviews flowing.
But this week, the New York Times published a long and enthusiastic review of a self-published book, Alan Sepinwall’s The Revolution Was Televised.
[PRESS RELEASE] New York, NY (November 29, 2012) 34Scholastic, the global children’s publishing, education and media company, today announced the publication of Year of the Jungle (September 10, 2013), an autobiographical picture book by Suzanne Collins, author of the worldwide bestselling The Hunger Games trilogy, with illustrations by James Proimos. Scholastic also announced plans to publish the trade paperback edition of Catching Fire (June 4, 2013, ISBN: 978-0-545-58617-7, $12.99), as well as re-packaged paperback editions of Collins’s bestselling The Underland Chronicles, a five-book series about Gregor the Overlander, featuring all new cover art (Summer 2013). Scholastic will publish and deliver the books through all of its distribution channels.
Do you ever find yourself thinking, “Well, I could move to San Francisco, or New York, or China or Chile! And I could work in tech, or fashion, or marketing or something else!” while another voice in your head says, “This is my list of things to do today. I need to go buy groceries, book a bus ticket for tomorrow’s trip, follow up with Joe from the conference… ”
Holding these two types of thoughts—big picture ideas and day-to-day details—in your mind at the same time can lead to major stress.