B&N’s Parneros Strikes Back

In a lawsuit filed August 28 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, former Barnes & Noble CEO Demos Parneros has charged the retailer with breach of contract and defamation of character. The suit contains numerous unflattering revelations about the inner workings of B&N, and includes the bombshell news that a deal to sell the company to another “book retailer” fell through in June.

Parneros was abruptly fired from B&N on July 3, for unspecified violations of company policy. He was let go without severance. In his suit, Parneros claims that the nature of his firing, coupled with the current employment environment, left the public to assume he was guilty of sexual harassment. He denies, however, that this was the case.

Claims in Parneros’s suit indicate that his relationship with B&N chairman Len Riggio began to sour after an unnamed book retailer withdrew its offer to buy the company in June. According to the complaint, the retailer withdrew its offer after completing due diligence.

Read More at Publisher’s Weekly…

Walmart Fights Kindle with Kobo

Launching a partnership announced earlier this year, Walmart and e-book retailer Rakuten Kobo detailed plans to offer an array of e-book content, reading services and devices via Walmart stores and cobranded iOS and Android apps.

The new service, Walmart eBooks by Rakuten Kobo, launches today and will deliver a newly organized digital books and services catalog to Walmart consumers based on Kobo’s e-book inventory of about six million e-book titles.

Courtesy Kobo

The e-book retailing partnership will also feature a monthly audiobook subscription service for $9.99 a month (for access to one audiobook per month); digital book cards (with download codes) for more than 40 titles will go on sale at 3,500 Walmart stores; and Kobo tablets and digital e-readers will go on sale in about 1,000 Walmart stores,.

Read More at Publishers Weekly

50 Shades of Submission

Janet Reid writes…

I’ve recently had an agent request the first 50 pages of my manuscript after being “intrigued” by my query and first 5 pages. Good news, for sure. Here’s the thing: a MAJOR plot development happens on page 60; a real WOW moment (at least I hope).

I didn’t press my luck. I submitted the first 50 as requested. But I really wrestled with the idea of emailing the agent and letting her know about the major plot development and asking if it would be okay to send the first 60 as opposed to just the first 50. Would that have been okay? Or did I do the right thing but just giving her what she asked for and not pushing it (even though it would have potentially meant she’d have gotten to experience a real juicy moment)?

Read More at Janet Reid…

Tor (SciFi Publisher) Embargos Libraries

The announcement last month that Macmillan’s Tor division (perhaps the world’s best-known science fiction publisher) has instituted a four-month embargo on new e-book titles for libraries is an unwelcome development. Tor officials say the change is designed to test whether library lending is affecting retail e-book sales. Librarians, however, see the move as an unwarranted restriction that will needlessly impact science fiction fans, some of our most avid readers.

Read More at Publishers Weekly…

More Problems for B&N

From Michael Kozlowski

Major publishers have attended meetings with the founder of Barnes and Noble and have voiced their displeasure that the booksellers management team is in a constant state of disarray. They indicated that they have a strong interest in Barnes & Noble running a healthy and stable business, to counteract the clout of Amazon.

Barnes and Noble has gone through five different CEOS since 2013 and the latest was Demos Parneros, who was let go last month. He was terminated without severance in July for violating company policies. The company said at the time that his dismissal was unrelated to issues of financial reporting or fraud, but offered no further guidance. He barely lasted a year.

Read More at Good eReader…

The Price of Editing…

From BLAKE ATWOOD at The Write Life:

For comparison purposes, let’s look at the editing rates and use an average page-per-hour and an average hourly rate. For instance, the EFA lists basic copyediting of 5–10 pages per hour at a cost of $30–$40 per hour, so I’ve assumed 7.5 pages per hour at a cost of $35 per hour. The other total calculations also use their respective average rates.

For a 70,000-word book, your editing costs could be:

• Developmental editing: $.08 per word, or $5,600 total
• Basic copyediting: $.018 per word, or $1,260 total
• Proofreading: $.0113, or $791 total

It’s easy to extrapolate from this what your total expected editing cost could be. Fantasy, sci-fi, and epic novel writers should be forewarned.

For a 120,000-word book, your editing costs could be:

• Developmental editing: $.08 per word, or $9,600 total
• Basic copyediting: $.018 per word, or $2,160 total
• Proofreading: $.0113, or $1,356 total

Realize that these are simply one website’s average estimates for editorial costs. For further comparison, CreateSpace offers copyediting at $.016 per word for books longer than 10,000 words. Pronoun’s list of editors is also an easy way to compare many editors’ costs.

Read More at The Write Life…