News
Just when you thought celebrity books were dying !A bidding war has broken out among publishers for the rights to the singer's autobiography, with the price apparently reaching more than £5million.
Random House, HarperCollins and Penguin are all understood to be among the bidders, with industry insiders claiming competition has grown so fierce that the eventual fee could be the highest-ever paid for a celebrity's memoirs.
Penguin Boss Unfazed By March Of Ebooks
The relentless march of the electronic book – epitomised by Amazon's Kindle reader and the forthcoming Apple iPad – threatens to hollow out the publishing world in the same way as the internet has altered forever the dynamics of the music industry.
Penguin boss John Makinson likens the rise of the ebook to the moment when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 15th century.
Daily Mail
Amazon
Profits at online retail giant Amazon leapt by 71% in the last three months of 2009 as shoppers spent more than ever during the festive season.
Amazon reported a net profit of $384m (£238m), up from $225m in the same quarter a year ago.
Sales rose 42% to $9.5bn, helped by favourable changes in foreign exchange rates, the firm
Waterstones
The best thing that happened to bookselling during my time as a writer was the brave initiative of Tim Waterstone in establishing a chain of superb bookshops throughout the country. They were well-placed, inviting, efficiently-run and a wonderful improvement on WH Smith, the newsagents which were little more than pretend bookshops.
It was a bad day for authors when Tim Waterstone decided to sell his bookshops to WH Smith and retire. Four or five years ago there was a rumour that he might be tempted to come back and buy up the rival bookselling business Ottakers. But he did not come back and high street bookselling in this country has declined so rapidly since then that it seems in danger of disappearing.
What has gone wrong? The ending of retail price maintenance was a great blow to small independent bookshops. Waterstone's, which had bought Ottakers, was filling its windows and tables with cut-price paperbacks and three-for-the-price-of-two options, and appeared to be in a strong position. Publishers were obliged to pay, and pay heavily, for good positions for their titles in their shops.
But fundamentally Waterstone's had no real interest in books and was not looking to the future. The future lay with internet bookselling which Waterstone's has eventually started, but where it will find difficulty matching the super-efficiency of Amazon. Its policy of looking backwards and following what sold well last year or the year before has now hit the buffers. Celebrity books sold badly last Christmas and their sales dipped steeply. It is no surprise to hear managing director Gerry Johnson has left the sinking vessel. And it is too late now, I reckon, for his replacement, Dominic Myers, to call on Tim Waterstone
B kopedia
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