Thursday, March 15, 2012

Briefs from PublishersLunch: Encyclopedia Britannica Discontinues Print Edition; Vieser Werlag Declares Bankruptcy; and More


Encyclopedia Britannica will no longer publish print editions after more than 244 years of doing so, the NYT first reported Tuesday with an advance look at the press release, with the 32-volume set published in 2010 deemed to be its last-ever. (That edition has sold just 8,000 copies, a far cry from Britannica's peak in 1990, when 120,000 sets sold; there are another 4,000 copies of the 2010 edition still sitting in the company's warehouse.) Instead Britannica will concentrate on its online business and a wide range of editorial products, including several different digital versions of Encyclopedia that has, to date, sold more than 100 million copies worldwide.
"The end of the print set is something we’ve foreseen for some time," Britannica president Jorge Cauz said in a statement. "It's the latest step in our evolution from the print publisher we were, to the creator of digital learning products we are today." As part of the announcement the entire contents of Britannica.com are available for free this week.
Austrian publishing house Vieser Werlag has declared bankruptcy after more than 24 years in business, with debts of more than 865,000 euros. Founder and publisher Lozje Weiser told the Salzburger Nachrichten that he will continue to lead the company after the reorganization process and that there are several offers from prospective buyers being entertained. Vieser Werlag published more than 1,000 books, largely specializing in Eastern European fiction.
In something of an about-face, PayPal has revised its policy against processing sales of ebooks containing themes of rape, bestiality or incest after protests from authors and anti-censorship activist groups. Now the company, a spokesman told the Chicago Tribune, will only block payments for books containing illegal images and those that depict child pornography and will concentrate on individual ebooks instead of whole categories. PayPal's policy change also comes as spokespeople for Visa and Mastercard reiterated that they "would take no action regarding lawful material that seeks to explore erotica in a fictional or educational manner."
NYT bestselling author Scott Sigler will publish paperbacks of his self-published YA sports/sci-fi series the GALACTIC FOOTBALL LEAGUE through a new agreement with Diversion Books (which will use Perseus for distribution). Sigler's adult books are represented by Byrd Leavell at the Waxman Literary Agency, the affiliate company of Diversion. The books were not shopped to traditional publishers. Sigler's Dark Øverlord Paperback will be an imprint of Diversion Books and the first two books in the series are set for release this August.
In what's otherwise a fairly vanilla piece on how e-readers are fueling a growth in erotic romance, the WSJ reports that HarperCollins UK will launch a new digital imprint devoted to erotica, Mischief Books, on March 27. The new imprint will start out with 13 original titles priced at £1.99 and will also reissue backlist titles, all sold through its website and via Amazon and Apple.

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