Around the Bookish World: Week-In-Review

Welcome to this week’s news post – it has been a bit quiet on the publishing front, although there has been a slew of new book deals and announcements as well as some tidbit goodies from Patricia Briggs, Lauren Dane and Jenn Bennett.

First up, Amazon has announced their details for their annual breakthrough contest which for the first time does not involve Penguin which the winner of the previous awards have won a contract to publish their book. In this year’s contest, there will be separate finalists in the genres for Horror, YA,  Scifi and fantasy, Romance, Thriller and General fiction which each winning category will get a $15000 award whilst there is a grand prize of $50,000 and a contract to publish with Amazon’s own publishing imprints. The  date to submit for entries starts at January 14th – For more details and conditions of the contest can be …

Around the Bookish World: Week-In-Review

 Welcome to this week’s news post and it is has been an eventful week with news of more lawsuits over 50 Shades infringement, Random House new Digital imprints, and more book news!

Random House has announced they will soon be launching three digital imprints called Alibi (Mystery and Suspense), Flirt (New Adult) and Hydra (Scifi and Fantasy) which will join their sister imprint, Loveswept (Romance).  Random House is also on the search for self published authors who are willing to submit their books to these imprints, which is not surprising because quite a few authors have been recently picked up by major publishers via self publishing platforms. But Random House is not the only big publisher expanding in digital imprint, HarperCollins, Penguin and Simon and Schuster have all released or will be starting their own lines. More information on submissions can be found here.

Simon and Schuster have entered …

Around the Bookish World: Week-In-Review

Welcome to this week’s news post! In this edition, we have more rumours of consolidation amongst the Big 6, the nominees for the Bad Sex Awards and our usual book news and covers to watch out for!

Following the heels of the merger between Random House and Penguin, reports of  Simon and Schuster and News Corp’s  HarperCollins are in discussions to merge. News Corp is currently splitting up and spinning off its entertainment arm from its publishing and education companies, but this merger could bring in a greater market share. It does look like that the music industry, the big publishing companies are consolidating amongst themselves so that they can position themselves against the changes brought on by digital adoption. But it will be interesting to see if the other remaining Big two publishers, Hachette and Macmillan will follow suit, but I suspect they will but it does raise the …

Around the Bookish World: Week-In-Review

Welcome to this week’s news post and we have a chock full edition on upcoming movie adaptations and trailers as well as news on Fictionwise demise and book news and covers!

I think this was going to happen sooner than later, but Fictionwise has announced that it will be closing down from the 4th of December. For US customers they have up to the 21st of December to gain access to their shelves while the UK it is the 31st of January, there is also the choice to transfer their libraries to the Nook site. Although there is no information about the status on non UK/US customers but I would recommend you download and backup those books while the site is still running.  Fictionwise’s  other sister sites, ereader.com and ebookwise.com will also be affected but I think the writing on the wall for its demise is due to  the arrival of Agency …

Around The Bookish World: Week-In-Review

Welcome to this week’s news post! This week have news of a major glitch which led to the majority of the Big 6 books to become delisted on Amazon, Outlander has been greenlit to be turned into a series and much more!

Late last night, Twitter was ablaze with the news that Amazon has started to remove the buy buttons from the Big 6 Kindle books. Whilst in the past this has happened due to the introduction of Agency agreement which led to a standoff, it seems in this case the delisting was a glitch which only affected the US site, while the international counterparts were not affected. It was also interesting to note that smaller and independent publishers were also not affected either.  However this does give credence to the fear that Amazon who has huge market share of the ebook market could really affect sales if something like …

Around The Bookish World: Week-in-review

Welcome to this week’s news post! It has been a bit quiet this week but there is news of the long awaited launch of Barnes and Nobel in the UK and the growth of self publishing is making waves in the world of publishing as well as our usual books to look out for!

It has been a long while but the much promised and delayed presence of the Nook  has arrived in Blighty – Barnes and Nobel have officially launched their UK online site this week along with their devices, the Nook Touch (£79) and the Nook Glow (£109) are now available to order. The HD  tablets will follow suit soon and are available for preoder right now with a release date of 22nd of November. Whether this is too late for Barnes and Nobel to enter the UK market and elsewhere remains to be seen. But they face …

Around the Bookish World: Week-In-Review

Welcome to this week’s news post and it is pretty jam packed with the announcement of talks of merging with two Big 6 Publishers, more amazon news and the usual book news and books to watch out for!

Yesterday my Twitter feed came alight with the surprise admission between Penguin and Random House that they are in talks to merge  into one mega company. This led to some hilarious tweets about the new name which this new publishing company will be named after such as Random Penguin.  But on a serious note this is pretty surprising because Penguin is deemed to be the biggest publisher whilst Random House’s output is quite large and if there was ever a merger it would have been from the other Big 6 companies such as Simon and Schuster and Harper Collins whose parent companies have both separated their publishing arms from their main entertainment businesses. …

Around The Bookish World: Week-In-Review

Welcome to this week’s news post! It has been an interesting one with news of Johnny Depp launching a publishing imprint, rumours of more Twilight movies/T.V series and more news in the world of publishing!

Avon Romance has announced that they will be removing DRM (Digital Rights Management) in a selection of their books this week. Readers will be able to purchase books via All Romance Ebooks where there will be DRM free although other vendors will still be restricted with DRM at the moment. But Avon Romance/HarperCollins is the next major publisher which is following Macmillan/Tor who also announced earlier this year that their books will be DRM free. I suspect and hope other major publishers follow suit with this new trend. For more info on what books are selected, Avon has set up a Facebook App that lists the books that are DRM free and will allow …

Around the Bookish World: Week-in-review

Welcome to this week’s news post and have we got some interesting developments in the world of publishing and books such as the surprise announcement of the Kindle Paperwhite will be available in Europe,  and much more.

The surprise announcement by Amazon last night that their Kindle Paperwhite will be launched later this month (25th October) in the UK and later next month (22nd November)  for the rest of Europe. It was widely presumed and expected that the the Paperwhite would be available later next year or that the Europeans would have to wait for next generation model of a lighted screen.  But there is more good news linked to this – Amazon has also announced that the Prime Kindle Lending Library will also be launched to those customers who have Prime membership. Over 200,000 books will be available  to lend freely (albeit at one book a month but with …

Around the Bookish World: Week-In-Review

Welcome to this week’s news post and I have a slew of updates and news about book and author news as well some interesting developments with Amazon.

The most interesting news to come out this week was the news that Amazon will be producing its first feature film from a book they have already published via their own  publishing arm.  Seeds by Anna Ahlborn, a horror novel which was originally self published but was picked up by Amazon for their horror imprint. Amazon has previously announced they will be looking for scripts and books toadapt for  adaptation for movies and series which will help to strengthen and expand their original digital content platform.