Dominique Raccah

Wednesday's BookExpo panel on the future of bricks-and-mortar retailing couldn't have been scheduled at a more auspicious time for indies: the day after the American Booksellers Association announced a resurgence in the number of independent bookstores.

For the first time since 2005, there are more than 2,000 independent outlets in the U.S. Although ABA CEO Oren Teicher reiterated that statistic at the panel, the line that brought the largest applause

Yesterday I posted a blog discussing one point addressed during the CEO Roundtable at the Digital Book World Conference-namely, book discoverability. The larger discussion of that panel focused on the future of the ebook, for which the CEOs (Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Media, Dominique Raccah of Sourcebooks, Carolyn Reidy of Simon & Schuster, and David Nussbaum of F+W Media) seemed to have more questions than answers.

A new partnership between Naperville, Ill.-based published Sourcebooks and Toronto-based writing community Wattpad will result in published print and ebooks and will bring Sourcebooks and its authors closer to the growing workshopping platform.

First, Sourcebooks will edit and and distribute several select Wattpad manuscripts under its young adult imprint, Sourcebooks Fire. The titles will be made available in print and ebook formats and distributed to physical and online bookstores around the world.

US publisher Sourcebooks has acquired Simple Truths, a specialist inspirational and motivational books publisher. It is the 15th company acquisition that Sourcebooks has made since it was established in 1987, and is confirmed as its largest purchase to date. Simple Truths was founded in 2005 by Mac Anderson, selling direct to consumers through its website and currently has 100 backlist and forthcoming titles.

The Independent Book Publishers Association will hold its annual Publishing University in Chicago in just a few weeks, on April 26th and 27th.  The organization was founded thirty years ago by what president Florrie Kichler calls a “group of small publishers who couldn’t get their books out anywhere into the trade.”

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