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Hachette, Ingram call off deal to buy Perseus

Friday, 8 August 2014
In the US, Hachette and Ingram have confirmed that their agreement to buy the Perseus Books Group (PBG) has been called off. Publishers Weekly quotes a letter sent from Perseus...

FT Business Book of the Year Award longlist announced

Thursday, 7 August 2014
The longlist has been announced for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award, presented annually for the book that has ‘the most compelling and enjoyable insight into...

Sony will stop producing ereader devices 

Tuesday, 5 August 2014
Sony will cease production of ereader devices, because it is not ‘economically viable’, reports the Bookseller. The announcement that the company will halt ereader production, made in an interview with German technology website Lesen,...

HarperCollins completes acquisition of Harlequin

Monday, 4 August 2014
HarperCollins’ parent company News Corp has completed its acquisition of Harlequin from Torstar Corporation for C$455 million (A$447 million), reports Publishers Weekly. As previously reported by Books+Publishing, the acquisition was...

PEN Literary Awards 2014 winners announced

Friday, 1 August 2014
PEN America has announced winners for the 2014 PEN Literary Awards. The unpublished novel ‘And West is West’ by Ron Childress has won the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction,...

Macmillan US makes frontlist ebooks available to libraries

Thursday, 31 July 2014
Macmillan US is adding frontlist ebooks published in the previous 12 months to its public library elending project, reports DigitalBookWorld. The addition of frontlist titles increases the number of Macmillan...

Amazon outlines objectives in Hachette dispute

Thursday, 31 July 2014
Amazon has outlined its objectives in its dispute with Hachette US over sales terms in a post on its Kindle forum. A key objective is ‘lower ebook prices’, says the...

Apple acquires ‘Pandora for books’

Tuesday, 29 July 2014
Apple has acquired book analytics and recommendation company BookLamp, described as a ‘Pandora for books’, reports Techcrunch. The company, which was purchased for between US$10 and US$15 million, is best...

Frankfurt sends delegates to gamescon in Cologne

Tuesday, 29 July 2014
Frankfurt Book Fair’s (FBF) StoryDrive conference will send delegates to the computer-game trade fair gamescon in Cologne in August, FBF said in a statement. Ten representatives of international publishing houses and literary agencies...

Waterstones opens ‘indie’ bookshop

Monday, 28 July 2014
UK bookselling chain Waterstones has opened a new store under ‘independent’ branding, reports the Bookseller. Southwold Books opened in July in the seaside town of Southwold and will ‘be run...

Kindle Unlimited titles dominate Kindle bestseller list

Friday, 25 July 2014
The number of ebooks on the Kindle bestseller list that are offered through Amazon’s new subscription service Kindle Unlimited has tripled since the launch of the service, reports Digital Book...

Eight of the 20 top-grossing films adapted from UK books

Friday, 25 July 2014
A British Film Institute (BFI) report has found that eight of the world’s 20 highest-grossing film releases from 2001 to 2013 were adaptations of novels by UK authors, reports the Bookseller. The adaptations were four films based on J...

New Salinger title published

Thursday, 24 July 2014
In the US, the Devault-Graves Agency (DGA) has published the J D Salinger short story collection Three Early Stories as a print-on-demand paperback, ebook and audiobook, reports Publishers Weekly. DGA co-owner...

HarperCollins signs up to ebook bundling trial 

Wednesday, 23 July 2014
HarperCollins US has signed up to an ebook-bundling pilot program with Canadian start-up BitLit. HarperCollins is the first of the big five publishers to partner with the company, which has...

Amazon launches ebook subscription service Kindle Unlimited 

Wednesday, 23 July 2014
Amazon has launched an ebook and audiobook subscription service called Kindle Unlimited. The company said in a statement that the service offers ‘over 600,000 books—available on Kindle devices, as well as free Kindle...

Facebook tests ‘buy button’

Tuesday, 22 July 2014
Facebook has announced that it is testing a ‘buy button’ to allow users to purchase items directly from the newsfeed, said the company in a statement. The buy button is...

Oduor wins 2014 Caine Prize for African Writing 

Friday, 18 July 2014
Kenyan Okwiri Oduor has won the Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story ‘My Fathers Head’. The story is featured in the collection Feast, Famine and Potluck, which was...

Deraniyagala wins PEN/Ackerley Prize 

Wednesday, 16 July 2014
The £3000 (A$5487) PEN/Ackerley Prize for a work of memoir or autobiography has been awarded to Sonali Deraniyagala for Wave (Virago), reports the Bookseller. The memoir explores the author’s grief...