New Printers At Amazon
Amazon.com has installed new HP Indigo presses at several of its fulfillment centers. The new presses will increase the company's production capacity, and improve the quality of the books and add color.
Regnery Moving to PDS
Beginning May 1, Perseus Distribution Services will take over sales and fulfillment for Regnery Publishing. A leading publisher of conservative titles, Regnery had been distributed by NBN for the last 17 years. Publisher Marji Ross said she was impressed with PDS's growth plans and systems. On May 1, PDS will also begin accepting all returns.
MSN Search In Beta
A beta version of Microsoft's Live Search Books, which gives Web surfers access to public domain texts and noncopyrighted works, has launched. Microsoft, which hopes to expand its search to include copyrighted texts (as Google does) by next year, is looking to publishers for permission (unlike Google). Clifford Guren, Microsoft's director of publisher evangelism, said, "Being an intellectual property company, we are particularly sensitive to the intellectual concerns of the publishing community."
New LHE CEO
Carol Kloster has replaced Howard Reese as president and CEO of Levy Home Entertainment. Kloster had been CEO and president of LHE's parent company, Chas. Levy Company, before taking the executive v-p spot at Source Interlink in 2005 (when Source acquired Chas. Levy, save for LHE).
Post Leaving Dalkey
Chad Post, director of development at Dalkey Archive, is leaving the Illinois-based nonprofit press to head a similar literary operation at the University of Rochester. Post, who will start at Rochester January 1, will develop a literature-in-translation program there similar to the one Dalkey has. The move comes after Dalkey's planned relocation to Rochester fell through and the press instead chose to relocate to University of Illinois' Urbana-Champaign campus.
Pleasant Co. Changes Moniker
Pleasant Company Publications is changing its name to American Girl Publishing Inc., effective January 1. According to a note from the company, the name change will allow the company to leverage the American Girl brand and be more easily recognized among booksellers and educators.
Seven Seas Does Kiddie List
Manga publisher Seven Seas Entertainment has launched a children's prose line. The line, aimed at tweens, will launch in summer 2007 with 12 titles, including prose novels. Seven Seas will also republish Rachel Roberts's 10-volume fantasy series Avalon: Web of Magic (which has sold 750,000 copies to date), along with two new Avalon titles.
Simon & Schuster to Pub Sobols
Simon & Schuster's Touchstone/Fireside imprint announced that it will publish the winner of the Sobol Awards, a contest aimed at discovering previously unpublished fiction writers. The winners of the awards, however, are still to be named, as the deadline for the contest has been extended due to an unexpectedly low response. The first place winner will receive $100,000.
Obituary: Rusty Drugan, 59
Wayne A. "Rusty" Drugan Jr., who led the New England Booksellers Association as executive director since 1992, died at home in Cambridge, Mass., December 7. He was 59 years old. Before joining NEBA (now called NEIBA), Drugan worked at Reading International in a number of capacities, including vice-president, for 15 years. He also served as a Republican election commissioner for the city of Cambridge since 1995. NEIBA is planning a memorial service in Massachusetts early next year. No date has been set.
Correction
Our Table of Contents last week (Dec. 4), mistakenly identified Knopf as the publisher of Elif Shafrak's The Bastard of Istanbul; the publisher is Penguin, as stated in our story (p. 26).
