Amazon has acquired the publication rights of some 120 books currently published by The Toby Press. The books represent works by 61 authors and include literary and commercial fiction titles and works in translation. Toby’s CEO, Matthew Miller, is re-focusing his business on his Koren and Maggid imprints, which he acquired last year, and moving the business from Connecticut to Israel. Miller will continue to publish some titles, such as Hebrew classics in English translation, under the Toby name, but the majority of new publications--about 250 titles per year--will be under Koren and Toby.
Amazon’s publishing imprints AmazonEncore and AmazonCrossing will re-publish the Toby Press titles as print editions and Kindle editions in the U.S. and internationally in cases where the authors choose to make their works available. The print editions will be available on Amazon’s sites worldwide and in bookstores in the U.S., the UK, and Germany. Amazon.com Books v-p Jeff Belle said, “We’re excited to expand the audience of [Toby Press’s] titles, some of which have never been published digitally before, and introduce them to readers everywhere.”
The Toby Press was founded in 1999. It published debut authors such as Crystal Wilkinson, Samantha Dunn, and Joshua Barkan, and celebrated translations of Anna Enquist of the Netherlands, Yasmina Khadra of Algeria, Hartmut Lange and Katharina Hacker of Germany, Haim Sabato and Shlomo DuNour of Israel, and Laurent Gaudé (winner of the Prix Goncourt).
Earlier this year, reports surfaced that Toby was scaling back its publication of new works. Miller told PW, “I’ve developed quite a few close friendships over the past dozen years since I started Toby, and it was important to me personally, to find a good 'home' for these outstanding writers. I think Amazon, with their publishing ambitions, will be an excellent home, with resources to match.”
