BTW News Briefs

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Hachette Takes Over Billing and Shipping for Perseus Books

Perseus Books’ billing and shipping is now officially being handled by Hachette Book Group.

A year ago, Hachette bought the Perseus Book Business and Ingram purchased Perseus’ four publisher services brands. During the transition, Ingram was handling Perseus Books order fulfillment.

Perseus Books is comprised of the imprints Avalon Travel, Basic Books, Da Capo Press, Da Capo Lifelong, PublicAffairs, Running Press, Seal Press, and Westview Press. Perseus publishing partnerships include Nation Books and Weinstein Books.

For more information, booksellers can contact their HBG sales representative or call customer service at (800) 759-0190.

Penguin Random House to Publish First Obama Books

Penguin Random House will publish forthcoming books by former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama, the New York Times reported.

PRH, which acquired world publication rights for two books to be written by President and Mrs. Obama, respectively, will donate one million books to First Book, a U.S.-based nonprofit that provides disadvantaged children with new books. In addition, the Obamas will donate a portion of their profits to charity, including the Obama Foundation.

The terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but industry executives with knowledge of the bidding process said the deal’s amount probably reached at least eight figures, the Times reported.

Application Opens for 2017 WNDB Internship Grants

We Need Diverse Books (WNDB) is now accepting applications for the 2017 WNDB internship grants. This year — the program’s third — five $2,500 grants will be awarded to diverse publishing and agency interns. New this year, WNDB will also include a metro stipend for each intern.

Internships can be an important gateway into positions at publishing houses and literary agencies, and WNDB’s program allows access to well-qualified candidates who might not be able to afford to live in New York City. Since the program began in 2015, 11 interns have gone on to full-time publishing jobs.

Hummingbird Announces Monthlong-Discounts Program

Hummingbird Digital Media has introduced “Must-Read Bargains,” a selection of e-books and audiobooks that are discounted to consumers for a complete calendar month.

The company, which lets booksellers create a free branded storefront to sell e-book and audiobooks, introduced the new program as a way to make it easier for booksellers to develop and deliver effective promotions.

To help booksellers promote the new program, Hummingbird has also selected a number of the discounted titles and produced cut-and-paste jpeg images to be used in e-mails, newsletters, and on websites.

For more information, booksellers can send an e-mail to [email protected].

New Study Finds Post-Millennials Prefer Brick-and-Mortar Stores

A study by IBM and the National Retail Federation (NRF) has found that those born in the mid-1990s and later, also known as post-millennials or Generation Z, prefer shopping at physical stores rather than shopping online or through retail apps.

Post-millennials spend about $830 billion a year in the U.S. and are the first generation to grow up almost from birth with smart phones and other digital devices. The study’s participants included consumers ages 13–21 in 16 countries.

IBM and the NRF found that 67 percent of post-millennials mostly shop in brick-and-mortar stores, while another 31 percent shop in-store on occasion, and just two percent of them shop only online or using a phone app. In addition, just 22 percent of those surveyed use computers to make most of their purchases, while 13 percent make most through a phone app.

The study also found that about two-thirds of those surveyed think that product quality, availability, and value are the most important factors when making a purchase.

Amazon Opens First East Coast Brick-and-Mortar Store

Amazon has opened its first East Coast store in Dedham, Massachusetts, the Boston Herald reported.

The store, located in the Legacy Place Mall, is the first Amazon bookstore to have a coffee shop: a Peet’s Coffee and Tea.

The online retailer has opened three brick-and-mortar stores on the West Coast since late 2015: in Seattle, San Diego, and Portland. Three other Amazon stores are currently slated to open on the East Coast, in New Jersey, New York City, and Lynnfield, Massachusetts.

#FreeWordsTurkey Petition Presented to German Government

Representatives from the German Publishers and Booksellers Association, the PEN Centre Germany, and Reporters Without Borders visited the German Chancellery on Friday, February 24, to hand over the #FreeWordsTurkey petition to government spokesperson Steffen Seibert and German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s foreign and security policy advisor, Dr. Christoph Heusgen. They were accompanied by Can Dündar, a Turkish journalist living in exile in Germany.

The Change.org petition, which has been signed by 111,047 people since September 2016, calls on the German government and the EU Commission to make an uncompromising commitment to defending freedom of expression, information, and the press in Turkey. It also urges the government to work for the immediate release of detained and imprisoned authors and journalists.

LA Times Announces Book Prize Finalists

The Los Angeles Times has announced the finalists for the 37th annual Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 11 categories, including history, poetry, mystery/thriller, graphic novels/comics, current interest, young adult literature, fiction, and nonfiction.

The announcement included five nominees for a new award for autobiographical prose named in honor of Christopher Isherwood.

The Times also announced Thomas McGuane as the recipient of the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement. This year’s Innovator’s Award honoree will be announced on March 16, and the rest of the winners will be named on April 21, immediately preceding the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, taking place April 22–23 at the University of Southern California.

See the entire list of nominees here.