BTW News Briefs

Online Sales Soar for Some Over Black Friday Weekend

According to the second installment of the 2003 eHoliday Mood Study, conducted by Shop.org and BizRate.com, over half of retailers surveyed saw sales increase more than 25 percent over last year for the Black Friday weekend. Additionally, 71 percent of online retailers said that they are feeling optimistic about the holiday season, up four percent from two weeks ago.

This year, consumers seem to be embracing shopping across Web sites, stores, and catalogs more than ever. According to the study, 50 percent of consumers are using the Web to research products and then buy them either in a store or through a catalog. And 45 percent of consumers are researching gift purchases in stores and catalogs and then purchasing them online.

Knopf and Doubleday to Launch of New Line of Mass Market Paperbacks

On December 10, the Knopf Publishing Group and the Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group announced that a new line of mass market paperbacks will debut in 2005. Published under the auspices of Vintage and Anchor Books, the program marks the first time these two book groups will publish in the format on a consistent basis. The publishers expect the list to evolve over time to include as many as a dozen books a year from the Knopf and Doubleday Broadway publishing groups -- the eventual goal being to publish one mass market title per month. The inaugural Vintage/Anchor mass market list will include The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown and I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story by Rick Bragg.

The mass market list will complement the trade paperback list that is currently in place at Vintage/Anchor, and will be published by the same personnel.