Industry News

By Megan DiMaria

Happy New Year! I hope 2014 is a wonderful year for you, in which dreams come true and goals are met. Welcome to the January roundup of publishing industry news.

• The sale of Marcher Lord Press, Christian fantasy and science fiction publisher, to Steve Laube was finalized on January 1, 2014. For more info . . .
• Barbour Publishing is launching a new imprint, Shiloh Run Press, which will include both genre fiction and nonfiction. For more info . ..
• Don Pape has started a new position with NavPress. Pape will lead the publishing team acquiring and developing new resources to be brought to market by the company’s alliance partner, Tyndale House Publishers. For more info . . . 
• Online retailer, Zola Books, has acquired Bookish, billed as the Pandora for books. Bookish is backed by Hachette, Penguin and Simon & Schuster. For more info . . . 
• Kensington Publishing has bought Lyrical Press, an e-book publisher. For more info . . . 
• Eagle Publishing is for sale, and rumor has it Salem Communications is the buyer. For more info . . .
• Skyhorse Publishing has launch Yucca Publishing, a new imprint is a partnership with International Transactions literary agency. For more info . . . 
• Distributor of e-books for self-published authors, Smashwords, had a record year and looks forward to continued growth. For more info . . .
• Scribd, an e-book subscription service, has announced a global deal that will make Smashwords titles available in the Scribd library. For more info . . .  
• In the ongoing Apple e-book price-fixing saga, the Department of Justice urged the judge to deny Apple’s bid for a stay while its appeal is heard. For more info . . . 
• They’re not giving up. The Author’s Guild is appealing judge’s decision to dismiss its copyright suit over Google’s library scanning program. For more info . . .
• Chuggling along! Simon & Schuster is on track to “deliver record profits, a healthy gain in revenues, and our best-ever margins.” For more info . . .
• Plagiarism is a serious issue, so why is Shia LaBeouf only skywriting an apology? Wonder if we’ll hear more about this situation. For more info . . .
• Morgan James Publishing and CML Entertainment will launch a new series imprint with nine titles slated for release in the fall of 2014. The imprint will release adult, young adult, and children's titles. For more info . . .
• Writers, do you need a home to write in, and are you willing to locate for a great deal? How doess Detroit sound to you? Write-A-House, a Detroit-based literary organization, is giving houses away to writers who live in them for two years. No kidding. For more info . . .
• Forty-year industry veteran Rubin Pfeffer has left East West Literary to open his own agency, Rubin Pfeffer Content. 
• Bookstore sales slipped 1% in October, while entire retail sales rose 4.7%. For more info . . .  
• Penguin Random House has purchased Times Media Group's majority stake in South Africa-based Random House Struik. For more info . . . 
• Say it ain’t so. A Pew Research Center survey says 52% of respondents believe they do not need libraries as much as they used to. I know, I’m showing my bias, but who doesn't love libraries? For more info . . . 
• And in other news, the first bookless public library system in the country opened San Antonio, Texas. For more info . . .
• Interesting item: The Tattered Cover Bookstore, one of the nation’s largest independent bookstores, has opened four locations at Denver International Airport. For more info . . . 
• A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by independent booksellers against Amazon and the big six publishers that alleged conspiracy to restrain trade through Amazon’s use of proprietary DRM in its Kindle e-reading platform. For more info . . . 
• Young adult books are publishers' fastest-growing market. For more info . . .
• Amazon Publishing launches StoryFront, a short fiction imprint. For more info . . . 

Megan DiMaria is Novel Rocket’s industry news columnist. An author and speaker, she enjoys cheering on writers and loves to encourage others as they journey through life’s demands and delights. Megan is the author of two women’s fiction novels, Searching for Spice and Out of Her Hands.