After scaling back its book club business over the last three years, Bertelsmann is disbanding its Direct Group as a stand-alone division as of June 30th.
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 …
German Buch News: Virtual Author Readings Gain Popularity, Advertising Volume is Up (Just)
By Siobhan O’Leary Virtual author readings are becoming a more common occurrence in Germany. The Tagesspiegel writes that publishers such as Berlin’s Galiani Verlag are creating bigger and better events that take place even if their authors cannot attend them or are unable or unwilling to attend. One of Galiani’s latest books, Nichts als die Welt (Nothing But the World) …
German Buch News: Bertelsmann Sheds 20% of Workforce; Arvato adds Digital Services Portal
By Siobhan O’Leary Big news from Gütersloh this week: the Neue Westfälische reports that Bertelsmann is letting go of 130 of its 692 employees. This comes after several months of targeted cost-cutting measures in the face of losses that hit TV division RTL and Gruner + Jahr’s periodicals (both subsidiaries shrank by 10% in the first half of 2009.) Meanwhile, Buchreport …