Son Decides to Publish Last Nabokov Novel
Vladimir Nabokov's son Dmitri has told Germany's Der Spiegel that he
has finally decided to ignore his father's instructions to burn his
final manuscript, THE ORIGINAL OF LAURA, and will instead have it
published. Dmitri said, "I'm a loyal son and thought long and seriously
about it, then my father appeared before me and said, with an ironic
grin, 'You're stuck in a right old mess - just go ahead and publish!'"
Dmitri has called the manuscript "the most concentrated distillation of
[my father's] creativity."
Guardian
blog
Thomas Nelson Cuts Staff
The religious publisher laid off "about 60" employees yesterday, or
what the company calls "slightly less than 10 percent of our
workforce," as part of their previously announced program to cut their
publishing list in half to concentrate more energy on fewer titles.
Cuts were made at all levels, including a number of executives.
CEO Michael Hyatt writes on his blog, "This was not an easy decision.
It fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say this was one of the
most difficult decisions of my tenure Thomas Nelson."
He adds, "Honestly, our layoffs weren't the result of the economy. They
didn't happen because we had a bad year. (Our fiscal year ended March
31.) To be sure, it wasn't a great year. But it was decent. We saw
modest growth on the top line (about 4%) and really good growth on the
bottom line (about 14%)."
Rather, it was "because we have changed our business strategy." The
company previously announced that they would cut their new title output
in half. "Since we cutting the number of titles we are publishing, we are also
adjusting our overall business model and reducing our overhead." At
the company's recent "open house" with top accounts, Hyatt said, "We
don't need more books, we need better books. We're going to spend even
more time to make sure that the products are right before they go out."
Hyatt blog
Tennessean
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Personnel News
Penguin Group cfo Nigel Portwood will move over to the new role of evp,
global operations for the group. Still based in the US, his "principal
responsibility will be to drive forward and co-ordinate the
modernization and integration of Penguin's publishing operations around
the company. He will be responsible for technology planning and
implementation across the company, and also for the redesign of the
company's processes in areas such as workflow and production." Filling
his post as cfo is Coram Williams, currently head of financial planning
and analysis at parent company Pearson. Williams will remain based in
London and joins the Penguin Group Board.
R&L Buys Bernan
Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group has acquired Bernan
Associates, a publisher and distributor of U.S. government and
intergovernmental publications, accounting for approximately 15 percent
of the Government Printing Office's total sales program output, and
Bernan's UNIPUB division, a distributor for international organizations
since 1955. Bernan had been owned by the Kraus Organization. They say
the acquisition "complements Rowman & Littlefield's Government
Institutes, which the company acquired in 2004."
Harlequin Picks Vendor
Harlequin will use LibreDigital's Internet Digital Warehouse solution
to drive their widgets and online book browsing
Free BookMooching Sells Books (and Makes Affiliate Cash) "By Accident"
BookMooch is an online site that enables participants to swap books for
free, but as CNet reports, much to the surprise of founder John
Buckman, the site generates approximately $500,000 annually in Amazon
sales. They report, "for every 25 books swapped on BookMooch, at least
one person buys a new book on Amazon through the Moochbar."
"We're making money by accident," Buckman told a group of students
recently. "This is meant to be a noncommercial business, with no ads
and no fees," he said, but with continued scaling, "It seems to me we
should be able to trade more books than Amazon sells."
CNet
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