By Siobhan O’Leary When Bloomsbury announced a substantial restructuring of its global operations about three weeks ago, it wasn’t immediately clear how the changes would impact Germany’s Berlin Verlag, which was acquired by Bloomsbury in 2003. Berlin Verlag has now announced that Elisabeth Ruge, co-founder of the press and managing director since 2005, will be stepping down as of March …
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Random House, Others Begin Supplying German Kindle Content
By Siobhan O’Leary As Amazon publicly seeks PR experts to market the Kindle program in Germany, speculation is on the rise that a dedicated German Kindle store is on the horizon. For real this time. To this point, Kindle customers on the search for German-language books have more or less been left out in the cold. Until recently, the German selection …
81m Strong Germany Downloaded 900 Million Phone Apps in 2010
By Siobhan O’Leary The mobile research firm research2guidance reports that German mobile users downloaded around 900 million apps to their mobile telephones in 2010 — more than double the number of apps downloaded in 2009 (458 million) and nearly 150 million more than were forecasted in September. But does or will this eventually spell big revenues for app developers? Paid …
Adapted Hist-Fic Huge on German Boob Tube, Tie-ins Take Off Too
by Siobhan O’Leary Author and literary critic Elke Heidenreich once wielded enough power to make a book a bestseller in Germany simply by mentioning it on her television show Lesen!. When ZDF cancelled her show in late 2008 amidst controversial debates about its quality, many saw it as a sign that television networks now deemed books too unsexy for prime …
Decamping from Frankfurt: Eichborn Moving to Berlin, Ponders Merger with Aufbau
By Siobhan O’Leary Following Suhrkamp’s headling-grabbing move from Frankfurt to Berlin last year, many in the German publishing industry wondered if it was an isolated incident or if other publishers would follow suit. Now Eichborn has announced its intention to join the ranks of publishers headquartered in the German capital — specifically in Aufbau’s future permanent home in Berlin. For …
End of Year Sales Bode Well for German E-book Market
By Siobhan O’Leary German book chain Thalia reported its highest sales to date for its Oyo Reader in December, according to buchreport. The device — which reached stores in November — was one of Thalia’s top 5 bestselling products and, perhaps surprisingly, most of them were sold in-store rather than online. Thalia witnessed a corresponding increase in e-book sales, with figures …
German Book Title Production Drops 7% in 2010
By Siobhan O’Leary New releases in Germany in 2010 were once again heavily weighted toward fiction titles, which accounted for an overall share of 70% of new titles published (up from 66% in 2009). However, overall title production was down 7% compared to 2009 and 9% compared to the long-term average. According to buchreport, a total of 5431 new titles …
Book2Look’s “Biblet” Takes the Book Widget to the Next Level
By Siobhan O’Leary Widgets can tell us what the weather will be, what time it is, or even help us plan dinner. And, of course, there are widgets that allow us to preview, share and buy books. German technology company Book2look (www.book2look.com) is a social media marketing tool that allows publishers to create widgets (book2look calls them Biblets) and embed …
Making Open Access Pay
By Siobhan O’Leary BERLIN: Last month’s annual German Book Office Editor’s Trip to Berlin and Munich brought six university press editors from the US together with an array of German scholarly and STM publishers. Participants included Marguerite Avery, Senior Acquisitions Editor, The MIT Press; Jean Black, Executive Editor, Yale University Press; Jennifer Crewe, Associate Director and Editorial Director, Columbia University …
France to Reduce VAT on E-books to 5.5% Starting in 2012
By Siobhan O’Leary In several European countries, books are subject to a reduced VAT rate in light of their status as a “cultural” product. This has been complicated by the emergence of e-books, which tend to be viewed as electronic products for taxation purposes and are thus subject to full VAT (19% in Germany, as opposed to the reduced rate …