John Wiley & Sons is buying Blackwell Publishing, the British
academic and professional publisher, for slightly more than $1 billion.
The deal should close early in 2007.
Blackwell's publishing programs include journals, books and online
content in the sciences, technology, medicine, social sciences
and humanities. Blackwell Ltd., the book library service and retailing
business, is a separate entity and is not part of the acquisition.
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Librería Cervantes was one of several stores destroyed in a case of arson in a strip mall in Miami, Fla., yesterday, the Miami Herald reported. The fire appears to be one of a series of suspicious fires that have broken out in Little Havana over the past few months.
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Some schools are staging their own book fairs, longtime domain of Scholastic Book Fairs. Today's Boston Globe
mentions a school that relied on Porter Square Books, Cambridge, Mass.,
for stock. Another school turned to BookFairs by BookEnds, an offshoot
of BookEnds, the Winchester, Mass., store. BookFairs by BookEnds is putting on 35 school book fairs this fall.
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Alice Virginia Kesterson,
longtime sales director for Random House and owner of Alice, a
bookstore in Snow Hill, Md., died last Thursday at home. She was 50 and
is survived by her husband, Randy James Ifft. The couple also ran a
B&B at Chanceford Hall.
"People can buy bestsellers anywhere," Kesterson said about her store.
"I sell the other wonderful new books, titles people can't find
anywhere else on the Eastern Shore."
During her 22 years in publishing, she helped build Ballantine/Del
Rey/Fawcett and reconfigured the sales force after the
company's acquisition by Bertelsmann.
Donations may be made in her memory to the Alice V. Kesterson Memorial
Scholarship Fund, care of Taylor Bank, P.O. Box 9, Snow Hill, Md. 21863.
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How to reward customers or what to do with unwanted titles or . . . ?
Small Press Central, which lists small press titles and links to parent Bookworld Companies'
Web site, which has more than 5,000 book titles from more than 180
publishers, is offering a free book to buyers, even on orders of just
one book. At checkout, customers may select from a list that includes
Turbo Protein Diet, Learning How to Learn and
other titles.