Random House Acquires Rights to Michael Jackson's Autobiography

Big money is on the way for Random House after buying the rights to Michael Jackson's best-selling 1988 autobiography, “Moonwalk,” U.S. and Canadian rights were bought by Harmony Books, an imprint of Random House, which is owned by Europe’s largest media group Bertelsmann. Harmony will print an initial run of 100,000 copies.Harmony Books spokesman Campbell Wharton declined to comment on the terms of the deal made with Jackson’s estate.

Good for them! With the varying stories coming out these days about Michael Jackson as well as his life & death. That'll be of greater value now that he's gone that's for sure. More than in life, he's making money for people even in death

The Controversy Behind Why The "Jewel Of Medina" Was Never Released By Random House

One of the decade's most controversial topics is showcased in the book, "The Jewel of Medina." Said to be about Muhammad's child bride A'isha who was engaged to the prophet at the age of 6 years old and was speculated to be his favorite wife. Because of its rather sensitive topic, instead of the books becoming available on August 12, it has been postponed indefinitely I think.

Random House said it had been advised the book "might be offensive" to some Muslims, and "could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment."

The decision was taken "for the safety of the author, employees of Random House, booksellers and anyone else who would be involved in distribution and sale of the novel," said the company's deputy publisher Thomas Perry in a statement.

Which is a good call I think, although just like Dan Brown's publications (Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons) that caused a ruckus in the Roman Catholic circles, the controversial factor of the book's topic does make it more attractive and therefore more potentially profitable.

Sony ebook edges on Kindle

Sony ebook reader has expanded its acceptable formats trying to getting an edge on Kindle - which is quite heavily promoted on the biggest online retailer in the world. It's a rather smart move I think, since Kindle is tied to Amazon subscription and purchases, opening up the Sony ebook reader to a more varied audience will give it better coverage instead of only being limited to Sony's ebook store.

The new models coming out next month and those with upgraded firmware will be able to load

• IDPF/EPUB - this is the XML-based standard format proposed by the International Digital Publishing Forum, all the major publishers like Harper Collins, Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Penguin are offering texts in the .epub format
  
• PDF/A files - subset of the Portable Document Format that was designed for the purposes of long-term archival, with all fonts and images embedded into the document
• The device previously supported BBeB (Marlin) Books, PDF, TXT, RTF and Microsoft Word files (converted with Sony's CONNECT software).

This will make the Sony ebook reader a more flexible product

Random House Markets Coupland's Latest Novel In YouTube

Douglas Coupland's new novel "The Gum Thief" published by Random House will be marketed with a series of videos which were posted on Youtube recently.

The videos follow the book's theme in the form of narratives from the protagonist perspective as well as that of other characters from the book.

This is a new way of marketing for the book and is projected to interest younger markets into reading contemporary fiction.

Traditional book publishers such as Random House are turning towards more contemporary forms of advertising as well. It is smart to target Youtube as part of their marketing campaign. Wonder if their strategic partner in print on demand would offer that too...