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Representing approximately 80 percent of the trade book market, the Big Five publishing houses—Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster—are key stakeholders in the library value chain. In Five Questions with the Big Five, LJ interviews publishing’s top brass to better understand the issues they’re facing, the trends that have their attention, reading culture, and where they see library and publishing interests aligned. We kick off this series with Jonathan Karp, President and Publisher of Simon & Schuster, as he reflects on the state of publishing and his company's 100th anniversary.
The U.S. Book Show, presented by Publishers Weekly—this year in collaboration with the Association of American Literary Agents—held its fourth annual event on May 22. The conference, which launched as a virtual symposium in 2021 to replace the defunct BookExpo America, offered a day of industry-centered conversation for publishing professionals, agents, editors, marketers, and authors.
When Angel City Press (ACP) cofounders Paddy Calistro and Scott McAuley began thinking about retiring a few years ago, they knew they wanted to make sure ACP remained a local operation. Several years, a few lawyers, and much due diligence later, the donation of ACP to the Los Angeles Public Library has been approved by Los Angeles City Council, and ACP will now be known as Angel City Press at the Los Angeles Public Library.
KKR's potential acquisition of Simon & Schuster will undergo scrutiny from the Department of Justice before proceeding and could raise questions about how Simon & Schuster will do business with OverDrive in the future.
Most libraries don’t own their own ebooks. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to LJ readers, yet it’s a statement that continues to confound elected officials and administrators who get an astounding amount of say in how much money public and academic libraries are allotted. This is one of the reasons I, along with my coauthors Sarah Lamdan, Michael Weinberg, and Jason Schultz at the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy at New York University Law, published our recent report, The Anti-Ownership Ebook Economy: How Publishers and Platforms Have Reshaped the Way We Read in the Digital Age.
As the publishing industry makes greater concerted efforts to represent the rich diversity of the world in which we live, small presses and imprints under larger houses are taking the lead.
U.S. District Court Judge Florence Y. Pan’s decision blocking the $2.2 billion merger between Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster has apparently quashed the deal. Initially, PRH and its owner, Bertelsmann, said it planned to appeal. However, on November 21, Reuters reported that Paramount would let the deal expire without participating in an appeal, collecting a $200 million breakup fee from Bertelsmann. In a statement released late that day, PRH acknowledged that Paramount had backed away and said it was dropping the appeal.
Disability in Publishing, a United States–based organization of disabled individuals who work in traditional publishing, launched in late July via a virtual town hall. The group’s mission to “create community, provide resources, and increase accessibility across the industry in order to increase disability visibility and retain the talent of disabled publishing professionals” was well represented in the highly accessible event, which was simulcast on YouTube and Twitter and attended by people who are personally disabled and others looking to make their organizations more inclusive.
The proposed merger between Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster has attracted the attention of the Justice Department, which is concerned that the $2.2 billion deal will shrink opportunities for writers, and hurt consumers, by turning the Big Five publishers (once the Big Six, until Penguin and Random House completed their merger in 2013) into the Big Four. Its antitrust trial against the merger began in early August and ended Friday. A decision is expected in the fall.
On August 16, Hachette Book Group (HBG) and Workman Publishing announced that they have entered into a binding agreement for Hachette to acquire Workman. The transaction is expected to close this fall after regulatory approval by the Justice Department.
Award–winning author and editor Roxane Gay discusses the launch of her new imprint at Grove Atlantic, part of a welcome and necessary change in publishing.
The title of the inaugural U.S. Book Show’s opening track, “Libraries Are Essential,” was likely a well-worn sentiment for much of its audience. But coming at the beginning of Publishers Weekly’s (PW) virtual event , held May 25–27 to replace the retired BookExpo, the block of public and academic library–centered programming offered a pointed message to publishing capping a year marked by complicated relations between libraries and e-content publishers.
On March 29, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp announced that it will acquire the Books & Media segment of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), which will be operated by one of its subsidiaries, HarperCollins Publishers. For a cash purchase price of $349 million, HarperCollins, one of the “big five” U.S. publishing companies, has significantly added to its backlist by acquiring the consumer publishing business. HMH has stated that it will transition to focus exclusively on K–12 education and digital sales.
On March 16, the University of California (UC) and scientific publisher Elsevier announced a transformative agreement that will enable universal open access publishing in Elsevier journals for all UC research, control costs at a sustainable level, and support the university’s transition from paying for subscriptions to paying for open publishing of its research. The four-year agreement, which went into effect on April 1, is the largest of its kind in North America to date.
When show organizer ReedPop announced in December 2020 that it would be retiring its family of major publishing trade shows—BookExpo, BookCon, and UnBound—Publishers Weekly (PW) saw an opportunity to organize its own event. Working quickly after ReedPop’s announcement, PW leadership conceived and created the U.S. Book Show, a virtual conference for the global bookselling and book publishing industry that will debut from May 25–27.
Publishers and librarians offer their perspective on what makes for a great reference collection, and how to maintain it to serve all information seekers.
Best-selling author, actor, stand-up comedian, podcaster, and producer Phoebe Robinson partners with Plume to launch the imprint Tiny Reparations Books, which will give her a forum to "highlight and amplify unique and diverse voices."
In late June, Macmillan announced the creation of the Trade Management Committee, which will “set the goals and objectives for the publishers, divisions, and departments that comprise U.S. Trade and Shared Services.” However, the question remains whether this committee and other steps taken by the publisher will result in real change or are a temporary measure to placate criticism.
On February 3, representatives of Macmillan and its imprint Flatiron Books met with leaders of Latinx advocacy movements #DignidadLiteraria and Presente.org to discuss issues of inequity within the publishing industry that have come to the fore with the publication of American Dirt.
On November 1, Macmillan enacted its eight-week embargo period for new library ebook licenses. Many libraries have responded by announcing boycotts, as library organizations continue outreach and advocacy efforts.
The American Library Association and Public Library Association last month launched a public outreach campaign to mobilize opposition to Macmillan’s new eight-week embargo period for library ebook purchases. The campaign has gained traction online, with an eBooksForAll.org petition demanding the cancellation of the embargo garnering more than 103,000 signatures at press time.
Last month, the Panorama Project announced that Guy LeCharles Gonzalez would be taking over as Project Lead. The initiative aims to quantify the impact that libraries have on the publishing ecosystem—specifically the digital publishing ecosystem—and Gonzalez brings a new perspective to the project shaped by his 25 year career in the library and publishing fields.
Last month, I had the pleasure of digging into just how they are also key engines of a book-rich society and, as such, a critical part of the book market—active, engaged builders of excitement about connecting the information, ideas, or perspectives readers need to thrive.
Adam Matthew Digital, a SAGE company, has launched Quartex, a digital asset management solution designed to help libraries showcase archival collections.
Booknet Canada surveyed 500 Canadians over the age of 18 who read digital books about their format preferences, book buying, price points, channels, and more. See INFOdocket for an infographic and link to a video presentation on the findings.
With so many sessions, panels, and events, trade publishing conference BookExpo and its consumer companion BookCon, held May 30–June 1 and June 2–3, respectively, at New York’s Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, can be overwhelming for conference newbies and veterans alike. Here are a few that the LJ editors are most excited to attend.
The transformation of magazines continued apace in 2017, showing signs that some publishers have found the sweet spot within the print-digital mix. The ten best publications of the year illustrate that trend.
Hoopla digital last week announced an agreement with eBooks2go that will add thousands of educational ebooks and homeschooling materials to the digital content platform’s service, offering library patrons access to Shell Education and TIME FOR KIDS content from Teacher Created Materials Publishing, as well as ebooks and other resources from Boys Town Press.
Most college students prefer to read print books for pleasure, but when they are conducting research, almost two-thirds now prefer ebooks or express no format preference, according to Library Journal's 2018 Academic Student Ebook Experience Survey, sponsored by EBSCO.
Digital Science has debuted Dimensions. The free core version of the platform delivers one-click access to over nine million open access articles and 860 million abstracts and citations.
Speakers at ITHAKA’s The Next Wave conference, held at New York’s Roosevelt Hotel on November 29, made the case for work that colleges and universities must take on if they want to improve national educational attainment. The conference, “Innovating and Adapting to Address Today’s Higher Education Challenges,” looked at new approaches from a variety of angles, from administration to the classroom to research, with alignment between leadership and the library given particular attention.
The book world is always buzzing. But the buzz can be hard to harness for daily, timely application in our libraries. I’m pleased to share that librarians now have a new tool to put to work. Meet LJ’s Book Pulse, launched in October and powered by the deeply experienced and highly creative readers’ advisory (RA) expert Neal Wyatt.
The digital revolution has not discriminated. In its re-ordering of the publishing universe, changing the way readers find and buy books, it has unnerved, disrupted, flummoxed, and frustrated independent and major publishers alike. Yet Inner Traditions, a Vermont-based publisher of new age and alternative science books since the 1970s, has grown over the last decade.
With record-breaking attendance, estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands, the 12th annual New York Comic Con (NYCC), held October 5–8, in a move to support its diverse and ever-growing body of attendees, this year extended its regular programming efforts by partnering with nearby businesses and institutions, offering events outside its central location at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan.
Librarians from across the tristate area and beyond gathered at Brooklyn Public Library’s Dr. S. Stevan Dweck Cultural Center auditorium on the afternoon of September 15, 2017, for LJ’s first-ever Day of Dialog Brooklyn, extending the much-beloved annual Day of Dialog, now in its 20th year, into Manhattan's neighboring borough.
Students returning to Pennsylvania State University (PSU) this fall will find four new short story dispensing kiosks installed at libraries across campus, along with a website for submitting their own original stories for distribution through the kiosks. Developed by Short Édition of Grenoble, France, the kiosks’ simple interface allows users to select a story that takes one, three, or five minutes to read. Their story is then printed out on a narrow piece of sustainably-sourced thermal paper the size of a large receipt.
While intellectual freedom and open access (OA) are two ideals widely held and strongly advocated for across all disciplines of librarianship, each touches on different values. The panel “Intellectual Freedom and Open Access; Working Toward a Common Goal?” at the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference in Chicago, sponsored by ALA’s Intellectual Freedom Round Table, invited three librarians from different sectors to weigh in on where and how the two principles overlap, and how they can support each other.
Sue Macy’s Motor Girls, YA authors dishing about YA, gender stereotypes in YA romance, a World War II fighter pilot sharing his story, and more are poppin’ up at the PopTop stage or at Chapter 1.
In a May 2 statement, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) announced that Louisiana State University (LSU) filed a lawsuit against academic publishing company Elsevier for breach of contract on February 27. According to the complaint, Elsevier cut off the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine’s (SVM) access to content that was legally licensed by LSU Libraries. For many reasons, especially Elsevier’s often contentious relationship with libraries over the decades, this will be one of the more interesting cases to watch unfold.
Sarah Jessica Parker will sprinkle some stardust on the American Library Association (ALA) Annual meeting this year. The television and film actor/producer and library supporter is serving as Honorary Chair of ALA’s new global digital online platform, Book Club Central. Parker will reveal Book Club Central’s inaugural pick at its official launch during the President’s Program at ALA, Saturday, June 24, 3:30 p.m. at McCormick Place West in Chicago.
The shift to digital delivery of serials content has had a profound effect on the information ecosystem. Powerful discovery and social networking tools expose users to an incredibly rich world of commercially produced and open access (OA) content. Most publishers have explored new ways of pricing their content—such as population served, FTE (full-time equivalent), tiered pricing based upon Carnegie classification, or other defining criteria—or the database model, which treats all content within an e-journal package as a database, eliminating the need for title by title reconciliation. However, in the end, the pricing conversation always seems to circle back to the revenue generated by the annual subscription model.
One idea solidified by the fascinating February 15 panel, discussion “Challenging Topics, Challenging Times: Four Best-Selling Authors Reflect upon Culture, Creativity, and Changing the Conversation,” is that all Americans need to keep reading.
New York Public Library (NYPL) and big-five publisher Macmillan have reached an agreement that will see Macmillan release children’s and adult books inspired by and sourced at the library, making NYPL’s famed collection available to a broader audience.
For its 2016 Next Wave conference, scholarly nonprofit organization ITHAKA brought together nearly 200 academic librarians, publishers, technology partners, and scholars at New York’s Roosevelt Hotel on November 30 to take a look at what may lie ahead for academia. “The Bigger Picture: How Macro Changes in Higher Education Should Shape Your Strategy” condensed what had previously been spread over two days into one all-day session, with a strong focus on academic professionals’ take on the landscape.
Starting this month, Titan Comics joins forces with the iconic crime fiction imprint Hard Case Crime to launch Hard Case Crime Comics. Releasing both original and adapted works by celebrated authors of the crime genre as well as emerging voices in comics, the new line will boast the same gritty, sexy violence for which the mystery publisher is well known.
Kansas City Public Library, the lone site in the state of Missouri to host a copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio, worked with a local university on a for-credit course to prepare student docents.
Everyone has a book in them, it’s said. While Christopher Hitchens completed that phrase with “in most cases that’s where it should stay,” it doesn’t seem the public agrees. This is dramatically demonstrated by the expansion of U.S. publishing, as measured by Bowker, the U.S. issuer of ISBNs, the numbers that help track book sales. In 2002, Bowker issued 247,777. In 2012 (the most recent figures available), demand rose to 2,352,797—an increase of 2,105,020, or a whopping 849.5 percent.
HarperCollins took its latest step in enabling authors and readers to interact in real time and to give those fascinated by books and publishing an insider’s view of the business, all via live programming using the new Facebook Live app on smartphones. Launched on June 6, the five-day-a-week programs, ranging from 15-45 minutes, can exponentially expand an author’s reach, from being able to live stream a program from their own home or on a book tour, for instance, to posting that program on their Facebook page for later viewing (and sharing on social media) by fans, as well as on HC’s Facebook or Book Studio 16 pages.
Academic profile platform SelectedWorks has been redesigned and was recently relaunched as a librarian-facing faculty support tool, enabling academic libraries to manage the creation and organization of consistent, institution-branded faculty profiles that showcase open access articles and other scholarly work. The redesign was the result of “a change in understanding” of how the platform was being used, according to Jean-Gabriel Bankier, president and CEO of bepress, developer of SelectedWorks, as well as the Digital Commons institutional repository software suite and other academic publishing and communication products.
At a high energy midtown New York gala, the UJA-Federation of New York honored Steve Potash, president and CEO of leading library ebook distributor OverDrive, Inc., and Stuart S. Applebaum, emeritus executive vice president of Corporate Communications at Penguin Random House. UJA’s annual Publishing Division Dinner, held May 24, marked the first time the organization has acknowledged someone entirely dedicated to digital content with its celebration of Potash’s contributions.
The infamous Georgia State University (GSU) e-reserves case (Cambridge University Press v. Patton) emerged last month from its long winter slumber to give us yet another 200+ page decision which librarians, lawyers, and publishers have begun to parse and analyze. And, like me, they are probably asking themselves: What does this decision actually mean?
A new industry award aims to highlight extraordinary programs in public libraries across the country. Sponsored by big five publisher Penguin Random House (PRH), the Library Awards for Innovation will “acknowledge innovative public library programs and services that engage citizens in reading while strengthening the social and cultural fabric of their communities” according to a press release. The awards will consist of one $10,000 grant and four $1,000 grants for runners-up. Additionally, each winning library will receive $1,000 in PRH books.
What does fracking have to do with scholarly publishing and journal pricing? While the library financial landscape has improved since the depth of the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009, it still cannot be considered robust. As articles such as this one chronicle annual serials price increases, libraries, publishers, and vendors search for innovative ways to fulfill information needs within the finite, predefined budget environment. New business and access models ranging from the initial e-journal big deal packages, article pay per view, open access, mega-journals, and publisher e-journal database pricing have evolved in response to the environment; libraries, publishers, and vendors have merged, consolidated, or disappeared along the way. Just as fracking keeps the oil and gas flowing, these strategies enable the current scholarly publishing ecosystem to extract the necessary resources—intellectual and financial—to survive.
For blind and partially sighted individuals, reading is not just something they do for school or work: A 2012 study of blind individuals in the United Kingdom found that 82 percent reported reading for pleasure, with nearly 60% saying they read for more than ten hours a week.
In the previous article, we explored four libraries’ techniques for acquiring, curating, and promoting their large print collections. We also asked each librarian or manager to talk about how they use the collections in their community programs and outreach efforts. What we found was encouraging.
Serving the public good has long been the mandate of all libraries. Providing everyone with access to information, without regard to income or demographic differences, is perhaps a library’s most noble aspiration. For patrons with visual challenges, this has meant providing books in multiple formats, including large print.
Hachette Book Group (HBG) announced on March 1 that it had entered into an agreement to buy the Perseus Books Group, an independent publishing company. On March 3, Ingram Content Group announced its plans to purchase Perseus’s distribution operations. The two agreements come a little more than 18 months after an initial deal to sell Perseus’s entire operation to HBG fell through. Both parties hope to close the deals by the end of March, pending regulatory approval. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
The New York Public Library in December announced a new partnership with nonprofit Benetech, and the organization's Bookshare solution, to provide print disabled patrons with access to more than 370,000 accessible ebooks through NYPL and the Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library. Although Bookshare provides free access to its collection for all U.S. students with qualifying disabilities through an award by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs, access to the collection for qualifying adults, seniors, and other non-students generally requires payment of a $25 setup fee and a $50 annual subscription fee. The partnership to provide free access to library patrons through NYPL is Bookshare's first such partnership with a U.S. library, and Benetech officials have stated that the organization is hoping to establish similar agreements with public libraries throughout the U.S.
Oxford University Press (OUP) and the University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library have joined forces on The Ethics of Suicide: Historical Sources, a hybrid print book and interactive digital archive. Compiled over nearly four decades by Margaret Pabst Battin, distinguished professor of philosophy and medical ethics at the university, the scholarly work comprises a 752-page volume published by OUP, linked via embedded QR codes to an extensive archive of source material hosted by the Marriott Library. The searchable archive contains excerpts, links to primary texts where available, and local library catalog records, and can be accessed independently of the book and free of charge. In addition, readers may submit comments to the archive—corrections, addenda, or suggestions of other material for inclusion.
Librarians have long sought more guidance on self-published books as well as books by authors of color. Aiming to answer both needs is a new award offered by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA) and BiblioBoard (the company that partners with LJ on SELF-e), called the SELF-e Literary Award.
When the adult coloring craze jumped across the pond in 2013 with the intricate designs of Johanna Basford’s UK best seller Secret Garden (Laurence King), Dover Publications was ready. The company had been publishing coloring books for 45 years, not just for kids but for experienced artists as well, said Ken Katzman, VP, marketing. In 2012, encouraged by major craft chain Michaels, Dover launched Creative Haven, with images on only one side of a page, on good stock, with perforated pages for easy removal and display.
On February 3 HarperCollins announced that it would be publishing a sequel to Nelle Harper Lee’s beloved 1960 classic To Kill a Mockingbird. In the wake of the news, speculation about Go Set a Watchman’s provenance abounded: Is it a sequel to Mockingbird, or a first draft? Did Lee’s lawyer actually discover the manuscript in a safe-deposit box after it was believed lost for decades? Was the timing of its discovery only two and a half months after the death of Lee’s sister Alice, often considered to be her protector, a coincidence?
After years of expressing concern about the potential impact that library lending might have on consumer sales, major publishers have good cause to take another look at the library market for ebooks, according to executives from library ebook distributors OverDrive, 3M, and Baker & Taylor. With consumer sales growth slowing, bolstering institutional sales will likely become more of a priority for major publishers. OverDrive CEO Steve Potash noted that publishers, like all for-profit companies, are always looking for growth, and "there's still a lot a growth in institutions, and there [are] significant opportunities for growth in education.... If retail is flattening, you have to experiment."
In 2012, librarians at Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library (TSCPL), KS, conceived of an ambitious program: to help their writing group create a novel and publish it. Serialized online between May and September of that year, Capital City Capers was, says public services librarian Lissa Staley, “a seat-of-the- pants project.” The Community Novel Project was such a success, Staley told LJ in a recent phone interview, we “immediately realized we wanted to do it again.” And they did—each year since, the library has produced at least one book, with the procedures becoming more streamlined even as the formats became more ambitious.
When David Talbot, founder and former editor in chief of Salon, told a writer friend about an idea he had for investigative books on critical issues that would fill a gap left by the devastating cuts at newspapers and magazines, his friend introduced him to a like-minded publisher, Skyhorse founder Tony Lyons. The result: a new investigative book imprint, Hot Books, aimed at “ignit[ing] national debate.” Launched in late May by Skyhorse, the imprint will have a cobranded digital platform created with Salon.
The first SELF-e collection of self-published titles chosen by LJ and hosted by BiblioLab’s BiblioBoard releases this month, in time for the American Library Association’s (ALA) annual conference. On the occasion, LJ caught up with Mitchell Davis, chief business officer of BiblioLabs, to hear how this collaboration originated and where both SELF-e and BiblioBoard are headed.
During a week when it seemed as though everyone in the book world was talking about product, Library Journal’s Day of Dialog took some time out to focus on process. Publishing a book is a journey, and the aptly named Book Trip panel that gathered at New York University’s Kimmel Center to tell the story of Bill Clegg’s forthcoming debut novel, Did You Ever Have a Family (Scout Press: Gallery Books) gave attendees a good look at the road it traveled.
In a press release from the London Book Fair dated April 14, HarperCollins announced the expansion of its foreign-language publishing with the formation of HarperCollins Holland, HarperCollins Japan, HarperCollins Nordic (Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark), and HarperCollins Polska (Poland, Czech Republic, and Slovakia). The move, which builds on the Harlequin acquisition last year, gives the company a broader global reach by extending existing Harlequin publishing programs in those markets. It had been signaled April 10 with the appointment of Chantal Restivo-Alessi, HarperCollins (HC) chief digital officer, as executive VP, international.
ProQuest today announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Coutts Information Services from Ingram Content Group, including the MyiLibrary platform and the Online Acquisitions and Selection Information System (OASIS). In addition to augmenting ProQuest’s selection of ebooks with MyiLibrary’s 250,000 titles, a larger plan involves leveraging Coutts’ collection-building expertise, approval support, and ordering tools to begin developing a fully integrated service that streamlines the acquisition and fulfillment of print and electronic content together.
Last summer Tor.com, which has been publishing original short fiction on its site, announced a new imprint "dedicated to publishing the best novellas and short novels from emerging writers as well as established authors." On February 12, it released its initial list of titles.
Shawn Morin was named president and COO of Ingram Content Group on January 6. He joined the company in 2009 as chief information officer, and had served as COO of the company since June 2012, managing the company’s commercial activities, systems, and operations.
In what at first looked to be a decisive move in the direction of open access (OA), Nature Publishing Group announced December 2 that it would officially adopt two initiatives that would provide access to articles previously available exclusively by subscription. But the new features come with restrictions that many see as a nod to OA in name only, and Nature News quickly corrected its initial headline, which read “Nature Makes All Articles Free to View”—but not before it was picked up by a number of news and social media outlets.
In my last two columns I explored what I called the “mess of ebooks” and explained what I want from library ebooks. In this column I want to discuss a possible future that could be good for libraries and for publishers. Right now everything is in flux. Publishers are understandably wary of selling Digital Rights Management (DRM)-free ebooks to libraries, and the patron driven acquisition (PDA) model some libraries want might not be sustainable for publishers. Libraries are struggling to buy books at all. The library ebook market is in a state of flux. There’s opportunity in chaos, though, and the opportunity here is to create a future that’s good for everyone, from publishers to library users.
Simon & Schuster (S & S) last week announced that it will no longer require libraries to offer a "buy it now" option with the publisher's ebook titles. In theory, these buy it now links enable patrons to avoid long holds lists while ensuring that a small percentage of their purchases went to their library, rather than to an online retailer such as Amazon. However, many libraries and municipalities have policies in place prohibiting this type of arrangement, and others simply find the library-as-retailer concept objectionable or even unethical.
Several deals in late September and October highlighted continued expansion and new directions among the top three providers of distribution and client services to independent and small publishers: Perseus Books Group, IPG, and Ingram.
As part of University Press week, November 9–15, the American Association of University Presses broadcast an online panel on Collaboration in Scholarly Publishing via Google Hangouts. Moderated by Jennifer Howard, a senior reporter at the Chronicle of Higher Education, the panel featured Peter Dougherty, director of Princeton University Press; Barbara Kline Pope, AAUP president and the executive director for The National Academies Press; and Ron Chrisman, director of the University of North Texas Press.
Amazon and Hachette Book Group have ended the pricing dispute that the two have been waging since spring of 2014. On November 13 they jointly announced a multiyear agreement for ebook and print sales. The new terms will go into effect in early 2015, but Hachette has said that even before that time Amazon will restore its previous supply of Hachette titles and make them available for pre-order, as well as including them in promotions on the site.
On October 20–21, scholarly nonprofit organization ITHAKA held its annual Sustainable Scholarship conference at New York City’s Wyndham Hotel. The event’s theme, “At the Starting Line,” echoed the concerns of many libraries, publishers, and institutions about the demands for change driven by today’s information marketplace.
In three post–Labor Day memos to Penguin Random House (PRH) staff, CEO Markus Dohle detailed the formation of the Penguin Publishing Group, consolidating all Penguin adult trade publishing (Penguin Adult and Berkley/NAL) under one roof. He named Madeline McIntosh, U.S. president and COO of PRH, to head the new entity and said that longtime Penguin president Susan Petersen Kennedy would be leaving at the end of the year.
On October 17 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta unanimously reversed the District Court’s ruling on the Publishers v. Georgia State University (GSU) Fair Use Case.
As SAGE Publications’ CEO and president Blaise Simqu celebrated his tenth year in the job this August, he was also gearing up for SAGE’s anniversary: the company, founded in 1965 by Sara Miller McCune, turns 50 in 2015. It retains its deep connections to the library and higher education world, both through its journals, which comprise 50 percent of the business, and its textbooks, reference works, and databases, which make up the rest.
In a case that has drawn comparisons to the RoweCom/Faxon Library Services bankruptcy almost 12 years ago, the court of Amsterdam on Friday, September 19 granted Netherlands-based Swets & Zeitlinger Group permission to suspend payments to its creditors, and on Tuesday, September 23 accepted a bankruptcy filing from the group’s subsidiary—global subscription management provider Swets Information Services
Martin Eve is in a good position to spread the word about how open access publishing can benefit the humanities. He is a lecturer on 20th- and 21st-century American fiction at the University of Lincoln in the UK, with an impressive list of journal articles, book chapters, conference papers, and professional affiliations. His most recent book, Open Access and the Humanities: Contexts, Controversies and the Future, will be published by Cambridge University Press this November. At the moment, however, he is on research leave in order to concentrate on developing his new venture, the Open Library of the Humanities.
This fall, as part of a $10,000 grant program funded by the NC State University Foundation, NCSU Libraries has invited faculty members to develop alternative course materials. The Alt-Textbook Project is a competitive grant for faculty members to develop free or low-cost alternates to traditional textbooks using open source material.
Frederick Gale Ruffner, Jr., who founded Gale Research Company with his wife Mary Evans Ruffner, died on August 12 following a long illness. He launched enduring reference works including the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Contemporary Authors, and the Encyclopedia of Associations
Shortly after Simon & Schuster’s June 26 announcement that it had concluded a 15-month pilot test and would make its entire ebook catalog available to all U.S. libraries, Macmillan last week announced that it will make all frontlist ebook titles available to U.S. libraries as well. These moves mark a milestone in terms of the availability of popular ebooks, as Macmillan and Simon & Schuster became the final two of the “big five” publishers to allow U.S. libraries to license and loan all titles in their ebook collections.
Looking back, the irony is so heavy-handed that it seems contrived. As my colleagues and I were preparing for our MOOC on Copyright for Educators and Librarians, which launched for the first time last week, the only resource that we wanted to use but could not successfully negotiate the permission for was Susan Bielstein’s book about negotiating permissions. It would have been great for us and, I am convinced, for the Press if we could have offered a single chapter of it for our over 8,000 MOOC participants to read. In the event, however, we rediscovered the fear and lack of sound business sense that grips the publishing industry, but also discovered the richness of the free resources that were available to us.
Last month I enjoyed the distinct privilege of keynoting the Conference for Law School Computing (also known as “CALIcon”), a gathering of legal educators, law librarians, and IT professionals in law put together by the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI). I can’t say enough in praise of the ever-present spirit of sly spirited fun at this conference.
After three years, World Book Night U.S.—an effort to encourage adult literacy by giving away free books—will cease operations for the foreseeable future, due to lack of sustainable funding.
Say you’re a professional or businessperson who relocated to the United States. Or you’re a student who came to the this country to study. Or you live outside the United States but deal with Americans. You’re reasonably fluent in English, but you want to improve your skills. A new tool, PenguinStacks, is for you. Launched in beta this spring in the United States and Brazil, it takes aim at nonnative readers of English. The 120 titles on the site were assessed by New York University (NYU) PhD linguistics’ candidates and grouped into three levels.
Most academic librarians are familiar with the ‘big deal’ bundles offered by large academic publishers, which grant access to a large number of journals from a particular publisher at a discounted rate. And many will also be familiar with the opacity surrounding those deals, which are often negotiated on a school-by-school basis with confidentiality clauses in place. A new study of the economics of these bundle deals suggests that variations in how these bundles are priced for different institutions mean that they are a better deal for some schools than others.
