BTW News Briefs

Texas-Amazon Sales Tax Deal Beneficial to State

A sales tax deal that Texas made with Amazon appears to have been a profitable one for the state. According to figures released by the Texas comptroller’s office late last week, and reported in the Austin Statesmen, from the time that Amazon began collecting sales tax in the state to September 2014, tax revenue increased by $327 million.

In July 2012, under the parameters of a deal struck with the comptroller’s office, Amazon.com and its many subsidiaries began collecting and remitting sales tax to Texas for purchases made by state residents. In return, the state dropped the $269 million in back sales taxes that the online retailer owed the state.

Comptroller Glen Hegar told the Associated Press: “I believe Texas benefited from the deal with Amazon. The agreement meant Amazon began collecting and remitting taxes to the state, which the comptroller’s office felt were legally due. The agreement also allowed Amazon to start building warehouses and to greatly expand their physical presence in the state, which was largely beneficial to the economy.”

Bodleian Library Publishing Launches Children’s Imprint

Bodleian Library Publishing is launching a children’s imprint, Bodleian Children’s Books, which will publish at least two titles per season, beginning on September 18 with Penguin’s Way and Whale’s Way. The books, which are written by U.S. author Johanna Johnston and illustrated by Leonard Weisgard, were first published in the 1960s.

The aim of the new imprint is republishing “forgotten gems” and beautifully illustrated titles, according to the press, which is part of Oxford University’s Bodleian Library. All the books will be published in a gift hardback format, and Penguin’s Way and Whale’s Way will have a board cover, cloth binding, and endpapers.

The titles for spring 2016 are Veronica by another U.S. author, Roger Duvoisin, which was first published in the 1960s and is about a hippo that travels to the city, and The Story of Babar by Jean de Brunhoff, first published in 1931.

Macmillan’s Sargent Promoted at Holtzbrinck Publishing Group 

Since the merger of Springer Science+Business Media with the bulk of Macmillan Science and Education to form Springer Nature this past January, Holtzbrinck Publishing Group has undertaken a reorganization of the management structure of its global trade publishing, higher education, and digital business units.

Vatican Official Translates Diary of a Wimpy Kid Into Latin

A Vatican official’s Latin translation of Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney (Abrams) hits U.S. stores this week with a print run of 10,000 copies, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The translation — the title of which translates as Commentarii de Inepto Puero, which literally means “News Regarding an Inept Boy” — already has been published in Europe. There are more than 150 million copies of Kinney’s Wimpy Kid series in print around the world.

This is the first work of fiction to be translated into Latin by Monsignor Daniel Gallagher, an American priest who started working at the Vatican’s Office of Latin Letters in 2007 to promote the language of the Classics.

Gallagher, whose duties include managing the pope’s Latin Twitter feed and translating academic books, did the translation in hopes that the book will break through to a wider audience and “promote the teaching and learning of Latin in a fun way,” WSJ reported.

Abrams’s CEO Michael Jacobs said publishing the translation “is less about how many we’ll sell and more about confirming that the first book is a children’s classic.” In recent years only a few children’s books have been translated into Latin, including J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat.

Columbia University Press to Cease Distribution of Dalkey Archive

Columbia University Press will no longer handle worldwide distribution of Dalkey Archivetitles, starting August 31.

Dalkey Archive, a nonprofit publisher at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, publishes fiction, poetry, and literary criticism, including the works of Flann O’Brien and Carlos Fuentes, and specializes in the publication or republication of avant-garde literature.

Returns of Dalkey Archive books will be accepted at Perseus Distribution and Wiley European Distribution Centre until February 29, 2016. Starting August 31, all orders and customer service inquiries for Dalkey Archive should be directed to Ingram Publisher Services at [email protected] or (888) 558-2642.

Bookmasters Signs Distribution Deals with Paragon House, Flame Tree Publishing

Bookmasters has signed distribution agreements with two new independent publishers.

The Ashland, Ohio, company has signed an agreement with Paragon House to provide sales, distribution, and fulfillment services in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand. Based in St. Paul, Minnesota, Paragon House publishes trade books, scholarly research, textbooks, and reference works on general philosophy, ethics, world religion, spirituality, political philosophy, and economics. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC previously managed distribution for Paragon House’s titles, while Macmillan managed fulfillment.

Bookmasters also signed an expanded agreement with U.K.-based Flame Tree Publishing to provide sales, distribution, and fulfillment services to the independent trade in the U.S. and Canada. The new agreement with Flame Tree, which publishes highly illustrated titles on art, music, and lifestyle topics, complements its prior, more limited agreement with Bookmasters, which will continue as before.