Books that the company believes will not be bestsellers will have e-book editions that are available the same day the hardcover goes on sale.
"Our goal is to give the consumer what they want, when they want it, at a fair price," Macmillan CEO John Sargent told the Journal. He added that Macmillan will adjust the number of enhanced e-books it publishes based on market response.
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In a post on its website yesterday, the Authors Guild disputed Random House's assertion that it holds e-rights to many backlist titles, saying that the publisher "quite famously changed its standard contract to include e-book rights in 1994. . . . Random House felt the need to change its contract, quite plainly, because its authors did not grant those rights to it under Random House's standard contracts prior to 1994."
The Guild added, "A fundamental principle of book contracts is that the grant of rights is limited. Publishers acquire only the rights that they bargain for; authors retain rights they have not expressly granted to publishers. E-book rights, under older book contracts, were retained by the authors."
The Guild suggested Random "start offering a fair royalty for those rights. Authors and publishers have traditionally split the proceeds from book sales. Most sublicenses, for example, provide for a 50/50 split of proceeds, and the standard trade book royalty of 15% of the hardcover retail price, back in the days that industry standard was established, represented about 50% of the net proceeds of the sale of the book. We're confident that the current practice of paying 25% of net on e-books will not, in the long run, prevail. Savvy agents are well aware of this. The only reason e-book royalty rates are so low right now is that so little attention has been paid to them: sales were simply too low to scrap over. That's beginning to change."
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"I wanted to be in more of a community-oriented area,"
said Sharon Dlubala, who moved her bookstore, A Novel Idea, to historic
downtown Berlin, Md., from the outskirts of Ocean Pines, and re-opened
the day after Thanksgiving. "Independent book stores have a hard way to
go. We're competing with department stores and online, so the best way
to compete is with service."
The Daily Times
reported that to "provide even more service to her customers, in the
spring Dlubala plans to turn the store's back office into a reader's
room, which would be open to individuals as well as reading clubs. She
said although places like the local library offer space for readers,
it's not always convenient for the public."
"I want to make myself accessible for the community," said Dlubala.
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Richard and Judy strike back. In response to the announcement that the TV Book Club would debut next year on Channel 4 (Shelf Awareness,
December 2, 2009), displacing legendary U.K. book clubbers Richard
Madeley and Judy Finnigan, the couple "have now declared that they are
launching their own book club and have agreed with publishers that
their sticker--on which the commercial success of so many titles has
depended--will continue to go on the front covers," the Telegraph reported.
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Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was the bestselling novel of the decade by a U.K. writer, according to the Telegraph,
which noted that, "In a separate list for children’s books, the top
seven places were taken by J.K. Rowling with her Harry Potter novels.
At the top is The Deathly Hallows, her final book in the series. Since it came out in 2007, it has sold 4,369,994 copies, just beating The Order of the Phoenix, followed closely by The Half-Blood Prince."
Top 10 U.K. fiction bestsellers for the noughties:
- The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (5.2 million copies sold)
- Angels and Demons by Dan Brown (3.17 million)
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (2.06 million)
- Deception Point by Dan Brown (1.97 million)
- Digital Fortress by Dan Brown (1.85 million)
- The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (1.6 million)
- Atonement by Ian McEwan (1.52 million)
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (1.51 million)
- A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (1.43 million)
- The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (1.34 million)