hachette book group

Media Decoder Blog: Bookish, New Web Site, Provides Information on Books and Authors

February 5, 2013 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Bookish, the Web site built by top publishers to provide information on their books and authors in a literary magazine-like format, opened for business Monday night.

Although the site received financing from just three houses – Simon Schuster, Penguin Group USA and Hachette Book Group – it will include books by 16 other publishers including Random House and Scholastic.

Meant primarily as a destination for readers, visitors can also purchase books on the site directly from the publishers through bookish.com or other retailers if they’d like.

The initial line-up of features includes a diverse range of articles, including a review of the bestselling erotic novel “Fifty Shades of Grey” by the editors of the satirical magazine The Onion, and an essay by Elizabeth Gilbert, of “Eat, Pray, Love” fame, responding to Philip Roth’s criticism of writing as profession.

The site is expecting a lot of contributions by prominent authors who promised their support. Among the current offerings is an interview with Michael Connelly about a book he stopped writing after100 pages, and why.

The site was originally scheduled to go live in the summer of 2011, but there have been many changes along the way. One of the biggest adjustments to the original plan has been the evolution of the site’s book recommendation engine, which its creators argue will be the most sophisticated available.

Instead of relying essentially on the taste of other customers with similar preferences, as most recommendation engines do, Bookish’s tool takes into account critical reviews and awards. Eventually it will even reflect the insights derived from a reader’s own nuanced description of books — for example, that the reader found a book to be exciting but unsatisfying.

Ardy Khazaei, Bookish’s chief executive, said this will be a better way for people to discover new books, because recommendations from friends are not necessarily the best way to find a match for a reader’s tastes. He added that friends and relatives “won’t be able to know about as many relevant books as our tool can.”

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/04/bookish-new-web-site-provides-information-on-books-and-authors/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business Tagged With: hachette book group, initial line, there have been many changes

Media Decoder Blog: Pietsch of Little, Brown to Become Hachette Book Chief

September 10, 2012 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Michael Pietsch

Michael Pietsch, the publisher of Little, Brown and Company, has been named chief executive of the Hachette Book Group, replacing David Young, the company is expected to announce in a memo to staff on Monday.

Mr. Pietsch will take over on April 1.

A gregarious, well-liked figure at Hachette who has held his current position since 2006, Mr. Young has successfully brought the company up to speed digitally while navigating relations between the Hachette Book Group and its corporate parent in Europe. Hachette Book Group is owned by Hachette Livre, a publishing company based in France.

For months, Mr. Young, 61, has told associates that he was ready to leave his post and join his family outside London, where his wife, the novelist Elizabeth Noble, and their three children have been living for two years.

“I realized that despite loving this job, I couldn’t bear being separated from my family much longer,” Mr. Young said in an interview at the Hachette offices in Manhattan on Monday.

Mr. Pietsch, 55, is a natural successor from within the company, a hands-on editor who has proven that he can edit literary titans like David Foster Wallace as deftly as blockbuster commercial authors like James Patterson.

In March, Mr. Young told Arnaud Nourry, the chairman of Hachette Livre, that he intended to step down in a year.

Asked how long it took Mr. Nourry to find Mr. Young’s replacement, Mr. Nourry said, “It took me about a minute and a half.”

“Frankly, I did not meet with anyone but Michael,” Mr. Nourry said.

Mr. Pietsch said he accepted the job “after two deep breaths.”

“It’s a bigger transition than I’ve ever made,” he said. “The job of C.E.O. is much bigger than the job of a publisher. I get to the drive the Maserati that David has built. He really made it one company. He really made it come together.”

The succession plans call for Mr. Young to retain the position of chairman of the Hachette Book Group, spending approximately one week each month in New York. He will also take on the role of deputy chief executive of Hachette UK and chief executive of the Orion Publishing Group, a division of Hachette UK.

Mr. Pietsch, who will report to Mr. Young, will be responsible for leading the company through the digital transition that is changing the industry. But his first task will be finding his own replacement as publisher of Little, Brown. He said his search would include looking outside the company for candidates.

Several executives within Hachette said that the temperamental differences between Mr. Young and Mr. Pietsch were stark: while Mr. Young is known as charming and accessible, Mr. Pietsch can be more difficult to approach.

He is also a publisher who is deeply involved on the content level and comfortable in the arcane details of a manuscript — skills that may lessen in importance to his broader role as the executive in charge of Hachette’s direction and profitability.

Mr. Pietsch has published some of the biggest authors in the business, including Martin Amis, Michael Connelly and Stacy Schiff, and worked on memoirs by Keith Richards and Chuck Berry.

He edited “The Pale King,” the posthumously published novel by Mr. Wallace that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction this year. Mr. Pietsch assembled the book after Mr. Wallace died in 2008.

This fall, Little, Brown will release “The Casual Vacancy,” J.K. Rowling’s first novel for adults, a major acquisition for the imprint. Mr. Pietsch also lured the novelist Tom Wolfe away from his longtime publisher, Farrar Straus Giroux, paying him close to $7 million for “Back to Blood,” which will be released in November.

Mr. Pietsch has been with Little, Brown since 1991 and previously worked at Scribner and Harmony Books.

According to the company’s Web site, the Hachette Book Group publishes close to 650 adult books and 125 young adult and children’s books every year. In its quarterly report announced late last month, Hachette said its revenues were down 4 percent because of weak sales of newly released books. The company said it expected the second half of 2012 to be strong enough to reverse the sales trend.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/10/pietsch-of-little-brown-will-become-new-hachette-chief-executive/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: deep breaths, hachette book group, hachette livre

Media Decoder Blog: Judge Backs E-Book Settlement, Setting Stage for Price War

September 6, 2012 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Fred R. Conrad/The New York TimesJudge Denise Cote, in 2005.

4:01 p.m. | Updated A federal judge on Thursday approved a settlement with three major publishers in a civil antitrust case brought by the Department of Justice over collusion in e-book pricing, paving the way for a war over the cost of digital books in the coming months.

Denise L. Cote, the federal judge in Manhattan who is overseeing the case, rejected arguments against the settlement, saying they were “insufficient” to deny its approval.

In April, the government announced that it had filed a lawsuit against five publishers and Apple, accusing them of conspiring to raise the price of e-books.

Three publishers — Hachette Book Group, Simon Schuster and HarperCollins – agreed to settle with the government, while Penguin Group USA, Macmillan and Apple declined to settle. They face a trial next summer.

The settlement approved on Thursday called for the publishers to end their contracts with Apple within one week. The publishers must also terminate contracts with e-book retailers that contain restrictions on the retailer’s ability to set the price of an e-book or contain a so-called “most favored nation” clause, which says that no other retailer is allowed to sell e-books for a lower price.

For the next two years, the settling publishers may not agree to contracts with e-book retailers that restrict the retailer’s “discretion over e-book pricing,” the court said. For five years, the publishers are not allowed to make contracts with retailers that includes a most favored nation clause.

“The Government reasonably describes these time-limited provisions as providing a “cooling- off period” for the e-books industry that will allow it to return to a competitive state free from the impact of defendants’ collusive behavior,” the court said in a filing on Thursday. “The time limits on these provisions suggest that they will not unduly dictate the ultimate contours of competition within the e-books industry as it develops over time.”

Amazon, which in April called the settlement “a big win for Kindle owners,” has vowed to drop prices on its e-books, probably to the $9.99 point that it once preferred for most bestsellers and newly released e-books.

Other retailers, like Barnes Noble, could feel pressure to respond. Barnes Noble has spent heavily in the last several years to build its digital business in an effort to catch up to Amazon. While it has captured at least 25 percent of the e-book market, it does not have Amazon’s deep pockets and may have trouble matching discounts that Amazon can offer.

It was exactly the prospect of lower prices for consumers that the government cited when it filed suit. But publishers and retailers who are critical of the deal say it would have the unintended effect of allowing Amazon to gain a monopoly by offering lower prices than everyone else.

Gina Talamona, a spokeswoman for the Department of Justice, said in a statement: “The department is pleased the court found the proposed settlement to be in the public interest and that consumers will start to benefit from the restored competition in this important industry.”

An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment on the ruling.

The approval of the settlement had been widely expected. During a 60-day public comment period that ended June 25, the court received 868 public comments responding to the settlement, including objections from the American Booksellers Association, the Authors Guild and Barnes Noble.

Bob Kohn, the chairman and chief executive of RoyaltyShare and an outspoken opponent of the settlement, said he was “very disappointed” that the court made a decision without a formal public hearing.

“It appears that the district court completely deferred to the D.O.J., whose analysis of the case was faulty and insufficient,” he said. “I am hopeful that the U.S. Court of Appeals will closely review the important public issues in this case.”

Spokeswomen for HarperCollins and Hachette Book Group declined comment. Simon Schuster did not immediately return a request for comment.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/judge-approves-e-book-pricing-settlement-between-government-and-publishers/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: department of justice, hachette book group, paving the way

Media Decoder Blog: Stars Will Read Amazon Unit’s New Audio Book Series

October 3, 2011 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Would you listen to a recording of “The End of the Affair” that lasted hours? What if Colin Firth were reading it?

Audible, an audio book division of Amazon.com, said last week that it would introduce a line of audio books read by famous actors, including Naomi Watts (“Summer,” by Edith Wharton), Dustin Hoffman (“Being There,” by Jerzy Kosinski), Annette Bening (“Mrs. Dalloway,” by Virginia Woolf), Samuel L. Jackson (“A Rage in Harlem,” by Chester Himes) and Kim Basinger (“The Awakening,” by Kate Chopin).

The actors helped select the books they will read, making choices because they wanted “to inhabit a character that has always fascinated them, show a different side of themselves from what audiences have seen on camera or tell a personally beloved story,” said a statement from Audible. More books in the series are expected to be introduced throughout 2012.

Sales of digital audio books have boomed in recent months, industry statistics show. In 2010, sales of downloaded audio books totaled $81.9 million, a 39 percent increase from $59 million in 2009, according to the Association of American Publishers, an industry group.

Some audio books that have sold especially well have featured a celebrity behind the microphone. Little, Brown Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, published “Bossypants,” a memoir by Tina Fey, who read the audio book.

The audio book has sold more than 150,000 copies, said Anthony Goff, the publisher and director of Hachette Audio. Ms. Fey’s reading of the book — and the intimacy of spending hours one-on-one with a celebrity — have played a huge part in its success, he said.

“Celebrity narrators are great for bringing new fans to the format, never mind if they talk the audio up on their publicity tours,” Mr. Goff said in an e-mail. “That can really move the meter on sales.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=5e37223b6c3c06427d5c292d3a3b7f8f

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: hachette book group, jerzy kosinski, publicity tours

Mass-Market Paperbacks Sales in Decline

September 3, 2011 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Recession-minded readers who might have picked up a quick novel in the supermarket or drugstore are lately resisting the impulse purchase. Shelf space in bookstores and retail chains has been turned over to more expensive editions, like hardcovers and trade paperbacks, the sleeker, more glamorous cousin to the mass-market paperback. And while mass-market paperbacks have always been prized for their cheapness and disposability, something even more convenient has come along: the e-book.

A comprehensive survey released last month by the Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group revealed that while the publishing industry had expanded over all, publishers’ mass-market paperback sales had fallen 14 percent since 2008.

“Five years ago, it was a robust market,” said David Gernert, a literary agent whose clients include John Grisham, a perennial best seller in mass market. “Now it’s on the wane, and e-books have bitten a big chunk out of it.”

Fading away is a format that was both inexpensive and widely accessible — thrillers and mysteries and romances by authors like James Patterson, Stephen King, Clive Cussler and Nora Roberts that were purchased not to be proudly displayed on a living room shelf (and never read), but to be addictively devoured by devoted readers.

“In those days, you could easily ship out a million copies of a book,” said Beth de Guzman, the editor in chief of paperbacks for Grand Central Publishing, part of the Hachette Book Group. “Then shelf space started decreasing and decreasing for mass market, and it has especially declined in the last several years.”

For decades, the mass-market paperback has stubbornly held on, despite the predictions of its death since the 1980s, when retail chains that edged out independent bookstores successfully introduced discounts on hardcover versions of the same books. The prices of print formats are typically separated by at least a few dollars. Michael Connelly, the best-selling mystery writer best known for “The Lincoln Lawyer,” said he worried that book buyers would not be able to discover new authors very easily if mass-market paperbacks continued to be phased out.

“Growing up and reading primarily inexpensive mass-market novels, it allows you to explore,” he said. “I bought countless novels based on the cover or based on the title, not knowing what was inside.”

The growth of the e-book has forced a conversation in the publishing industry about which print formats will survive in the long term. Publishers have begun releasing trade paperbacks sooner than the traditional one-year period after the release of the hardcover, leaving the mass-market paperback even further behind.

Cost-conscious readers who used to wait for the heavily discounted paperback have now realized that the e-book edition, available on the first day the book is published, can be about the same price. For devoted readers of novels, people who sometimes voraciously consume several books in a single week, e-books are a natural fit.

“It’s a question of, do you still want to wait for the book?” said Liate Stehlik, the publisher of William Morrow, Avon and Voyager, imprints of HarperCollins. “The people who used to wait to buy the mass-market paperback because of the price aren’t going to wait anymore.”

That could be good news for authors who make up for a loss in mass-market sales with increases in e-book sales. Generally speaking, authors make more royalties on an e-book than on a paperback.

E-book best-seller lists are packed with the genre novels that have traditionally dominated paperback best-seller lists.

“In some ways, the e-book is yesterday’s mass market,” said Matthew Shear, the executive vice president and publisher of St. Martin’s Press, which currently has books by Janet Evanovich and Lora Leigh on the paperback best-seller list in The New York Times.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=06206b56a22a6dd5fa38454b9b914277

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: e book, hachette book group, impulse purchase

Mass-Market Paperbacks Fading From Shelves