Thursday News: Book Making and Black Friday Sales
Publishing NewsBooks-a-Million / Fair Use / Kobo / Nook Tablet3 Comments
Barnes & Noble Announces Black Friday Megadeals on Hottest Holiday Gifts Including Top-Rated NOOK Simple Touch® at Lowest Price Ever of Only $39 – The NOOK Simple Touch will be on sale for only $39, and prices on the NOOK Tablet HD will start at $79. Barnes & Noble promises great deals on NOOK digital books, too, including books by John Grisham, Sheryl Sandberg, and E.L. James (specifically the Fifty Shades trilogy). If you have had your eye on a Kobo Aura, you will be able to pick one up for $50 off on Black Friday, as well. Business Wire
This is How Huge Door-stopper Fantasy Novels Get Made – An interesting pictoral narrative of a book’s printing, binding, and boxing. The book featured is Robert Jordan’s substantial hardcover, A Memory of Light, and although the post was originally published almost a year ago, it’s still fascinating to see the stages of a book’s physical creation up close. Irene Gallo, Tor’s art director, notes that she had worked at the publisher for almost twenty years before visiting the bindery and seeing how the book was assembled and prepared to ship. Tor.com
BBC News – Bay Psalm Book is most expensive printed work at $14.2m – Sotheby’s successfully auctioned off what is believed to be the first “American” published book. Pressed in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1640, this small book of psalms sold for $14.2 M to David Rubenstein, who says he will loan it to US libraries. In addition to being expensive, this book sold by Boston’s Old South Church is also apparently very poorly printed.
“Publisher and author Isaiah Thomas noted 200 years ago that it “abounds with typographical errors” and “does not exhibit the appearance of good workmanship. The compositor must have been wholly unacquainted with punctuation.””BBC News
GoldieBlox backs down in legal battle with Beastie Boys – GoldieBlox has decided not to pursue a declaratory judgment against the Beastie Boys, who challenged GoldieBlox’s parody of their song “Girls,” turning the misogynistic lyrics on their head in an advertisement promoting more powerful girl toys. Despite their belief that their parody was fair use, GoldieBlox indicated that it wanted to “respect [the] wishes” of Adam Yauch, whose will articulated his desire that Beastie Boys music not be used in any advertising.
” In a letter to the band, signed from “Debbie and team GoldieBlox”, it states: “We don’t want to fight with you. We love you and we are actually huge fans. When we made our parody version of your song, Girls, we did it with the best of intentions. We wanted to take a song we weren’t too proud of, and transform it into a powerful anthem for girls.”” The Guardian
Sales Dip, Losses Rise at Books-A-Million – Although an improvement over second quarter performance, Books-A-Million sales dropped 3.5% this quarter, increasing its net loss by more than $4 million. Still Terry Finley, president of BAM, said comps sales rose during the quarter, and both books and merchandise are expected to sell more as we head into the holidays.
“Finley said print sales have continued to stabilize more as sales of e-books have slowed. Two print categories that did particularly well in the third quarter were biography Duck Dynasty books and diet and health. While the slower growth of e-books has been a positive for BAM overall, it did hurt in one area as the sale of Nook devices and accessories slowed.” Publishers Weekly
Amazon has an extra 30% off print book promo code. Enter the promo code BOOKDEAL. The book has to actually be sold by Amazon and there’s some other fine print. Good today through Dec 1. One book per account only.
I used it to get a print copy of Mirror, Mirror anthology even though I own it in digital (I’m maintaining my print collection of the In Death series). I’m not a big book buyer at Amazon, but sadly the print version was never sold where I am at Wal-Mart or Target or any of the grocery stores. Not sure if B&N had it or not. The last time I went in to their store the romance section was practically nonexistent.
@ Library Addict ~ B&N’s romance department must be dependent on store location. The one in Eugene Oregon is awesome and they will order anything with no requirement to purchase it. They also have a $25.oo membership that gives free shipping (as apposed to Amazon’s $79 prime that’s too steep for me) and 20% coupons every other week. All their trade sizes are automatically discounted on line and you can use a coupon on them once they are no longer “pre-order” status. It works for me and I don’t have to deal with Amazons impossible to understand fine print.