BTW News Briefs

Ingram and Macmillan in New Distribution Model

Ingram Content Group and Macmillan have announced a new arrangement under which Macmillan will use Ingram’s print on demand and physical distribution infrastructure to manage traditional inventory and POD for “long tail” titles. Macmillan will continue to fully service its customer relationships from its primary warehouse in Virginia.

“We have strategically positioned our physical and digital operations to help our content reach more readers in more formats,” said Peter Garabedian, Macmillan senior vice president and chief operating officer. “With Ingram’s power of physical warehousing and print through Lightning Source combined with CoreSource, their digital asset management, we can take advantage of Ingram’s complementary services to grow our business.”

PEN Announces 2010 Literary Award Winners

On September 22, PEN American Center announced the winners of the 2010 PEN Literary Awards. Two new prizes are included in this year's awards: The PEN/Edward and Lily Tuck Award for Paraguayan Literature and The PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing. The winners and runners-up will be honored on Wednesday, October 13, at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.

This year’s winners are:

• PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction ($25,000) Winner: Don DeLillo
• PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers ($35,000) Winner: Paul Harding for Tinkers (Bellevue Literary Press)
• PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award ($5,000) Winner: Michael Scammell for Koestler (Random House)
• PEN/W.G. Sebald Award for a Fiction Writer in Mid-Career ($10,000) Winner: Susan Choi
• PEN/Laura Pels Foundation Award for a Master American Dramatist (Prize consists of a gift from Bauman Rare Books) Winner: David Mamet
• PEN/ Laura Pels Foundation Award for an American Playwright In Mid-Career ($7,500) Winner: Theresa Rebeck
• PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing ($5,000) Winner: Marshall Jon Fisher for A Terrible Splendor: Three Extraordinary Men, a World Poised for War, and the Greatest Tennis Match Ever Played (Crown)
• PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship ($5,000) Winner: Pat Schmatz
• PEN/Voelcker Award For Poetry ($5,000) Winner: Marilyn Hacker
• PEN/Tuck Award For Paraguayan Literature ($3,000) Winner: Esteban Bedoya for El apocalipsis según Benedicto (Arandurã Editorial)
• PEN Award for Poetry in Translation ($3,000) Winner: Anne Carson for her translation from the Greek of An Oresteia: Agamemnon by Aiskhylos; Elektra by Sophokles; Orestes by Euripides (Faber & Faber)
• PEN Translation Prize ($3,000) Winner: Michael Henry Heim for his translation from the Dutch of Wonder by Hugo Claus (Archipelago Books)
• PEN Open Book Awards ($1,000) Winners: Sherwin Bitsui for Flood Song (Copper Canyon Press); Robin D.G. Kelley for Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (Free Press); and Canyon Sam for Sky Train: Tibetan Women on the Edge (University of Washington Press)

Lightning Source Expands to Australia

Ingram Content Group is expanding its presence in the Asia-Pacific market by establishing a full-scale Lightning Source print-on-demand book manufacturing operation in Australia. The new operation, which will manufacture both paperback and hardcover black-and-white interior books, is expected to begin operation in June 2011.

“The expansion of our Lightning Source global print solution into Australia is a significant step in the ongoing mission of Ingram Content Group to help content reach its destination swiftly and efficiently to retailers and readers worldwide,” said David “Skip” Prichard, president and CEO of Ingram Content Group.  “This expansion of Ingram’s global presence, from the United Kingdom to France and now Australia, provides publishers with expanded market reach and sales opportunities, as well as makes thousands of books available quickly and affordably to booksellers and their customers.”

The Lightning Source plant in Australia will be Ingram’s fifth networked book manufacturing facility. Lightning Source North American facilities include its headquarters in La Vergne, Tennessee, and a plant in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Lightning Source international locations include operations in Milton Keynes, U.K., in Maurepas, France, a joint-venture with Hachette Book Group.

WSJ Features Op-Ed: “The Internet Might Save Main Street”

In an Opinion column in the Wall Street Journal this week, writer and public speaker Peter Funt posited that the growth of Internet businesses might help save Main Street. “Save," he said may be overstating it, but he continued, “There is evidence that in some categories – books, and perhaps also video, electronics and toys – when giant chain stores go under, the door is reopened for the very locally operated independents they knocked out a decade or two ago.

“The book business provides a particularly vivid example, because the big players like Borders and Barnes & Noble are being clobbered by Internet sales, via companies such as Amazon, as well as by online delivery of e-books. But few observers – even the most aggressive supporters of the digital frontier – are prepared to write off the segment of book buyers who will, for the foreseeable future, prefer to purchase books printed on paper in a retail setting that is more likely located on Main Street than at the mall.”

Funt points to the recent New York Magazine article on the success of 13 independent bookstores and notes that “five just recently opened, boosted by ‘the local-is-better’ethos, which has bled over from the culinary and fashion worlds."