Macmillan Expands Its Reach
Earlier this month, following an agreement forged earlier this year, Macmillan announced that more than 2,000 of its titles would be available on Scribd, a book subscription service that has a huge library of content (books, comics, and audiobooks). In a similar vein, Macmillan yesterday announced that 2,000 of its titles were made available on Oyster, another subscription book service.
If there’s one thing that these expansions tell us, it’s that Macmillan is making a greater effort to expose readers to its content by placing it where the readers are. Subscriptions services may not be the most lucrative model, but it certainly creates opportunity for lesser-know books to be discovered.
Harlem Book Fair 2015 Arrives on July 18th
For 17 years, the Harlem Book Fair has stood as our nation’s flagship African American public literary event. Located between West 135th street on Lenox Ave and stretching to Frederick Douglass Boulevard, the fair will host many exhibitionists, and has teamed up with the West Side Barnes & Noble for pre-event author readings.
In addition, the 14th annual QBR Phillis Wheatley Book Awards will be announced on Friday, July 17th at Columbia University. Be sure to take a look at the website to find some Spoken Word performances or author panels that might be of interest, and go out in support of literature.
Publishing Goes to Comic-Con
Out in San Diego this past weekend, Comic-Con International opened its doors to floods of fans. Comic-Con describes itself as “a nonprofit educational corporation dedicated to creating awareness of, and appreciation for, comics and related popular artforms, primarily through the presentation of conventions and events that celebrate the historic and ongoing contribution of comics to art and culture.”
Many different types of publishers were present at this huge event, including DC and Dark Horse, manga publisher Viz Media, French comics house Dargaud, and Hoopla Digital, among others. There were many children’s and young adult creators who won Eisner awards (The Zoo Box, by Ariel Cohn and Aron Nels Steinke; El Deafo, by Cece Bell, and Lumberjanes in the teen category). This major convention has been receiving increasing amounts of attention in the past years, which speaks to the growth of graphic novels and comics as a viable and popular narrative media.
Click here and here for some of Publishers Weekly’s San Diego Comic-Con coverage.
Any publishing stories you think we should have covered? Mention them in the commentsbelow and we’ll give you a shout-out next week! We mean it!
(Featured Image source: Macmillan; Oyster)
