At the third CONTEC Mexico conference, booksellers from Germany and Spain discussed the art of attracting customers in an age of online shopping.
Jerusalem’s Zev Birger Editorial Fellowship Names 2019 Participants
Representing 18 countries in its 2019 class, the Zev Birger Editorial Fellowship will be part of the Jerusalem International Book Forum in May.
PRH Takes Majority Stake in Brazil’s Grupo Companhia das Letras
In a memo from CEO Markus Dohle, Penguin Random House announces majority ownership in Brazil’s largest trade publisher, Companhia das Letras.
Readers Begin Voting on SyFy Pilots of Wattpad’s ‘Expiration Date’
Wattpad and SyFy now open voting for one of three television adaptations of a new book, ‘Expiration Date,’ which has 55 million reads on the platform so far.
Mexico’s Hugo Setzer on Politics and Publishing in a Complex Market
Hugo Setzer’s Manual Moderno publishes some 40 new titles per year and has an active catalogue of around 400 books in Mexico, a market in which, he says, censorship “is coming very close.”
Germany’s Bertelsmann Reports a Half-Year Decline at PRH; Dohle Messages Staff
‘Underlying operating revenue and profit numbers for Penguin Random House in US dollars have been stable year-over-year,’ Markus Dohle tells PRH staff, following the half-year report from Bertelsmann.
Rights Roundup: Crises, Confidence, Correspondence for Sale
What can happen in ‘180 Seconds’? That’ the crux of one of the titles in our rights roundup, which gathers the work of Spanish, American, French, Finnish, Swedish, Polish, and Greek authors.
Industry Notes: Indonesia Named London’s 2019 Market Focus; McIntosh Is CEO of PRH US
Indonesia will be the Market Focus at London Book Fair in 2019. And in New York City, Markus Dohle names Madeline McIntosh as CEO of Penguin Random House US.
The Netherlands’ Sweek Adds a Spanish-Language Contest With PRH Grupo Editorial
Now with more than 100 contests as part of its writing-and-reading mix, the Dutch platform Sweek is working a Spanish-language competition, #Soytalento, into the program.
Agency Rights Update: Madrid’s CBQ Agencia Literaria
A good agency’s character is ‘built with many authors, not single ones.’ CBQ’s Claudia Bernaldo di Quiros offers five titles making rights sales.