Class-action law firm Hagens Bermans seeking more plaintiffs for its lawsuit against Apple and five publishers over illegal ebook price-fixing.

The publishers include HarperCollins, Hachette, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster—five of of the top names in the book publishing world.

via Lawsuit Filed Against Apple and Book Publishers Over Illegal Ebook Price Fixing.

Financial Times owner Pearson has put itself on a collision course with Apple over the onerous terms it is demanding for print app subscriptions, with chief executive Marjorie Scardino arguing that as competition increases publishers will no longer have to cave-in.Earlier this month Apple announced a new subscription service for magazines, newspapers and music bought through its app store, but offered tough terms including keeping 30% of subscription revenues and retaining control of customer information.

via Pearson on collision course with Apple over app terms | Media | guardian.co.uk.

When we discussed the top ten for the last full week before Christmas, we mentioned the scale of the sales. Well the final week (short of one day of course) was 25% bigger than that. The real winners were the top five. Jamie Oliver’s incredible streak of sales was capped by the incredible number of 11.271 and John Giles’s memoir scored a startling 8,718 while US2, from Ray D’Arcy sold 7,263. Gill & Macmillan’s Sounding was again a roaring success and in sold some 5,289 units.

Five of the top ten titles were published by Irish based publishers and five by foreign based publishers. The larger Penguin group had four titles in the top ten including two published by Penguin Ireland and two by other group companies.

Hachette Ireland’s decision to publish Giles’ memoir has paid off handsomely though whether it has paid for itself is hard to know given the rumoured large advance.

Emma Donoghue finishes a fine year with a strong fourth and early favourite for Christmas number one, Ryan Tubridy will be more than happy with his final week’s sales of 4,696.

1: Jamie’s 30-minute Meals, Jamie Oliver, 11,271
2: John Giles a Football Man, John Giles, 8,718
3: Us 2:Saturday 2nd October 2010:Today FM Photography Book, Ray D’Arcy, 7,263
4: Room, Emma Donoghue, 5,567
5: Soundings:Poems We Did for Our Leaving Certificate, 5,289
6: Guinness World Records 2011, 5,281
7: Wasters, Shane Ross & Nick Webb, 4,900
8: JFK in Ireland:Four Days That Changed a President, Ryan Tubridy, 4,696
9: Oh My God Delusion, Ross O’Carroll-Kelly, 4,501
10: The Help, Kathryn Stockett, 4,265

Data Supplied by Nielsen BookScan taken from the Irish Consumer Market week ending 25th Dec 2010

Quite a week for Christmas this year with sales of the top ten titles falling JUST short of 50,000 units. If it confirms anything it is the total dominance of Irish writers and projects. Eight of the top ten titles and fifteen of the top twenty titles are Irish authored projects. A pretty remarkable result in a market that seems somewhere between 75% and 85% of the books sold on our shelves published by foreign based publishers.

It was another remarkable result for Penguin companies too, a number one, number eight AND a number ten. In fact in the top twenty alone they have seven titles, mostly Penguin Ireland titles of which there are four in the top twenty.

Both mentor and Gill & Macmillan will be pleased with the week of sales. Soundings has proved ‘the little title that could’, selling enormous numbers of units since release and finishing on a tremendous note. Mentor’s Us2 showed the strength of Ray D’Arcy with a huge but short sell through which included a number one the week before Christmas week. Barnardos will profit from the titles success too as a portion of each unit sold will go to the children’s charity.

Of course, because Christmas falls on a Saturday a huge week of sales remains to be account for (numbers are collected Sunday-Saturday). Given the hefty sales this week and the snow effect during the current week, it seems likely that those results may be more subdued. However, it will be interesting to see how the results end up.

1: Jamie’s 30-minute Meals, Jamie Oliver, 7,748
2: John Giles a Football Man, John Giles, 6,568
3: Us 2:Saturday 2nd October 2010, Ray D’Arcy , 6,063
4: Guinness World Records 2011, 5,484
5: Soundings: Poems We Did for Our Leaving Certificate, 4,274
6: JFK in Ireland:Four Days That Changed a President, Ryan Tubridy, 4,266
7: Room, Emma Donoghue, 4,107
8: The Oh My God Delusion, Ross O’Carroll-Kelly, 4,034
9: Homecoming, Cathy Kelly, 3,448
10: Wasters, Shane Ross & Nick Webb, 3,386

Jamie Oliver’s 30-Minute Meals has scored a remarkable Number One in Ireland with a huge 7,748 copies sold in Ireland in the last week, despite the snow.

The book, which was published by Michael Joseph (an imprint of Penguin), had an ASP of €22.01 and generated sales of some €170,533.48 in revenue.

Oliver’s book beat last week’s Number One Us2, a photography book compiled by Ray D’arcy and Today FM, which sold 6,063 copies, into third and also managed to stay ahead of John Giles’ memoir, A Football Man which sold 6,568 copies.

The Bookseller reported today that Oliver was also Number One in the United Kingdom this week, his third such placing in a row.

The Bookseller reports that John Banville has moved from Picador:

Viking has bought the new novel from John Banville which will see the author move from Picador, his publisher since 1997.

Mary Mount, editorial director of Viking/Penguin bought UK and Commonwealth rights excluding Canada from Ed Victor to one book for an undisclosed sum.

It was a pretty good week all things snow, IMF and city centre marches considered. John Giles continues to dominate with his sales hitting well over 2,00 units. What remains surprising however is that it still only requires around 1,000 units or less to get into the lower ranks in the top ten. At this point in the year one might have expected a larger number to be the basic requirement for the top ten.

Penguin still holds 4 out of the 10 slots in the list which is a remarkable performance and one that has been sustained and ongoing with several other titles bubbling just below the top ten level.

1: John Giles a Football Man, John Giles, 2,314
2: Jamie’s 30-minute Meals, Jamie Oliver, 1,910
3: Guinness World Records 2011, 1,901
4: Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth, Jeff Kinney, 1,754
5: The Oh My God Delusion, Ross O’Carroll-Kelly, 1,341
6: Coming Home, Patricia Scanlan, 1,334
7: Soundings:Poems We Did for Our Leaving Certificate, 1,201
8: One Day, David Nicholls 1,144
9: Wasters, Shane Ross & Nick Webb, 990
10: JFK in Ireland:Four Days That Changed a President, Ryan Tubridy, 948

Data Supplied by Nielsen BookScan taken from the Irish Consumer Market week ending 27th November 2010

Paul Murrary, whose Skippy Dies was longlisted for the Booker prize, has made the shortlist for the Costa Prize Novel Award.

Murray’s is the only Booker nominated novel in an interesting list. It was published by Hamish Hamilton in the UK, a division of Penguin.

The Costa’s have a two stage announcement process with the announcement of the £5,000 category prizes on 5 January followed by the announcement of the overall £30,000 winner on 25 January.

The full shortlist of nominees for the 2010 Costa Novel Award is below:

Louise Doughty for Whatever You Love (Faber & Faber)
Nigel Farndale for The Blasphemer (Doubleday)
Maggie O’Farrell for The Hand That First Held Mine (Headline Review)
Paul Murray for Skippy Dies (Hamish Hamilton)
<<-->>
Image Credit

Some rights reserved by Robert Burdock

It’s definitely christmas time. Guinness World Records has joined the top ten list for the first time this week with some 1,049 sales. In fact every title in the top ten sold over 1,000 units.

Penguin will be happy still with their sales even if they don’t dominate quite as much as the did a few weeks ago, they still have three titles in the top ten.

And Faber‘s entry to the Top Ten comes after Fintan O’Toole engaged in a sustained promotional week appearing in many of the radio panels on RTE and other outlets.

Interestingly, Hachette Book Group Ireland score a number 7 slot with their John Giles memoir a title that’s certain to keep selling in the run into christmas. Irish publisher, Gill & Macmillan will be pleased to see their Soundings selling so well.

Perhaps the strangest entry to the top ten, but one that fantasy and science fiction  readers will not be surprised by is the Brandon Sanderson penned Towers of Midnight, the second of three parts of the last volume of The Wheel Of Time, a series begun by Robert Jordan in the 1980s and the first volume of which was published in 1990.

1: Jamie’s 30-minute Meals, Jamie Oliver, 1,721
2: JFK in Ireland:Four Days That Changed a President, Ryan Tubridy, 1,707
3: Wasters, Shane Ross & Nick Webb, 1,544
4: Towers of Midnight, Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson, 1,438
5: The Oh My God Delusion, Ross O’Carroll-Kelly, 1,373
6: Enough is Enough: How to Build a New Republic, Fintan O’Toole, 1,311
7: John Giles a Football Man, John Giles, 1,309
8: Soundings: Poems We Did for Our Leaving Certificate, 1,272
9: Room, Emma Donoghue, 1,087
10: Guinness World Records 2011, ,1,049

Data Supplied by Nielsen BookScan taken from the Irish Consumer Market week ending 6th November 2010

Colm Toibin and Emma Donoghue have made the shortlist for the International Author of the Year at the UK’s National Galaxy Book Awards.

Toibin’s Brooklyn which was published by Penguin and Donoghue’s Room, published by Picador and Booker short listed, are the only Irish authored titles on the list, which also features Jonathan Franzen. Kathryn Stockett, Christos Tsiolkas and Stieg Larsson.

Category winners will be revealed at a star-studded awards ceremony, produced by Cactus TV, on November 10th. The public will subsequently be invited to vote online for the Galaxy Book of the Year and the final result will be announced on December 13th. The awards ceremony will be televised on More4 on November 13th .

Amanda Ross, managing director of Cactus TV commented, ‘It’s great to see such a wide range of quality books on the shortlist. They seem to represent what the public are reading now and in the lead up to Christmas.’

IMAGE CREDIT

Some rights reserved by Flickr user mtkr