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NEWS NEWS / IN BRIEF
Free digital Insight boosts profits NEWS
BY NATASHA ONWUEMEZI
APA Publications has invested a seven-figure sum in the development of travel publisher Insight Guides, and will transform the business into an “online marketplace” that does not charge to access its content digitally. Insight Guides was acquired by
Swiss investors APA Publications for an undisclosed sum in 2014 from its previous owners, the Langenscheidt family. Following a seven-digit investment, the business has recovered from a loss of £158,000 in 2014, according to accounts filed at Companies House, to post a profit in 2015, said c.e.o. René Frey pictured—although its latest accounts have not yet been filed. Insight Guides made a profit as a result of selling travel trips from local experts online and making its book content available
digitally for free, Frey said. In future, once an Insight Guides book is ready to print, the content will then be published online for free. Frey said: “We don’t believe it is right to monetise our content online. Whether or not we provide freely available content online, we are confident that people will
always want to buy print editions of trustworthy travel guides because they are inspirational, good to hold, great to read and user-friendly.” Frey told The Bookseller Daily that the “disruptive” new business model would turn the company into a “completely new business in five years’ time”. He said the “controversial” move was about “customer satisfaction” and the first step in its bid to fine-tune its digital business model, Frey said, adding: “Books will have a place in the future. The challenge for publishers is to give them more value. We wouldn’t be surprised if, in a year or two, all publishers [were] giving e-books away. Publishers need a digital business model, that’s where most are struggling. They need a vision for the 21st century.” Insight Guides has 15 staff on the
digital side of the business, with plans to hire “substantially” more.
Teicher dispenses indie bookseller lessons
The resurgence of independent bookselling is set to become a “contagious” global trend, Oren Teicher inset, c.e.o. of the American Booksellers Association (ABA), has said. The increase in the number of indie booksellers in the US shows no sign of abating, Teicher said, with the sector stronger and more ”engaged” than it has been “in some time”. He added: “We believe that resurgence is contagious, and think it is going to happen around the world.” Teicher reported that the number of indie members of the ABA in the first quarter of 2016 had further improved on the gains made in 2015, a
“great year” in which volume sales were up almost 10%. He attributed the resurgence to a strong “localism movement” in the US, as well as publisher initiatives and smarter use of technology. However, he said the indie sector had also experienced challenges in the shape of minimum wage increases, higher rents and growth in online competition. “If I had a dollar for every time we were counted out, I’d be a pretty wealthy man,”
Teicher said. “We’re hanging in, we’re fighting back. We’ve got some challenges but we’re absolutely convinced there is a long-term, viable road ahead for independent physical bookshops.”
MICHAEL’S THE MANN FOR MORROW
HarperCollins imprint William Morrow has acquired three novels from four- time Oscar-nominated filmmaker Michael Mann, after a “hotly contested” auction involving “several major publishers”. David Highfill, vice-president and executive editor at William Morrow,
bought world rights to the titles. The first, to be co-written by New York Times bestselling novelist Don Winslow, will be published in 2017. The second will be a prequel to Mann’s original screenplay for “Heat”, the 1995 film starring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. The third is “being kept under wraps”. All three books will receive “major” global launches.
13.04.16
www.thebookseller.com NEWS IN BRIEF
LORD SAVES EVERYBODY
Jenny Lord at Canongate has signed a “trailblazing new kind of non- fiction” from Olivia Laing above after a “competitive” auction. Lord bought world rights, excluding North America, to Everybody from Rebecca Carter at Janklow & Nesbit. W W Norton’s Jill Bialosky acquired North American rights. Everybody is “an ambitious investigation” that melds cultural criticism, memoir, biography and psychology.
FABER SPRINGS SURPRISE
Faber creative director Lee Brackstone has signed the “extraordinary” début novel of filmmaker Omar Robert Hamilton, set during and in the aftermath of Egypt’s Arab Spring. The City Always Wins ranges from “the pitched night battles against the police in Cairo, to the solitary lows of defeated exile in New York”. Brackstone bought world rights, excluding the US, from David Godwin Associates.
INSIDER MI5 TALE TO MJ
Michael Joseph has struck a deal to publish a “real-life ‘Homeland’”: the memoir of a former MI5 surveillance operative recruited to hunt “the most dangerous terrorists”. Publishing director Rowland White acquired world rights in Soldier Spy by James Carus from Luigi Bonomi at LBA Literary Agency, and will publish in September. Carus’ account is said to be the “first ever inside, on-the- ground account of what the security service are doing to protect us all”.
COLE’S RAGDOLL PURRS
Conville & Walsh has sold Daniel Cole’s crime series into eight territories, with more “imminent”. Trapeze commissioning editor Sam Eades pre- empted UK and Commonwealth rights to three books in the series, the first of which, Ragdoll, features troubled detective Nathan Wolfe, from C&W’s Sue Armstrong on the eve of the fair.
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