News Briefs: Week of 9/1/08

U.K.–based Quarto Group reported a 20% increase in sales, to £43.8 million ($81 million), and a 32.5% increase in adjusted operating profit, to £2.2 million, for the first half of 2008. Revenue in the company's publishing segment rose 24%, to £30.4 million, due to the inclusion of recently acquired Motorbooks International, but softness in the American market limited gains, and publishing sales in the U.S. were down in the period. Sales in the company's co-edition segment rose 12%, to £13.4 million, and here, too, a slowing American market hurt the total performance.

Virgin Comics, the international joint venture between Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group and the India-based comics publisher Gotham Entertainment, has been shut down. The company's New York City office and publishing unit has been closed, and the eight people who staffed it have been laid off. Virgin Comics CEO Sharad Devarajan (who is also president of Gotham Entertainment) said the company is “restructuring” and will relocate to a new office in Los Angeles.

Amazon has acquired Shelfari.com, the Seattle-based social networking site for readers. Amazon had been an investor in Shelfari, which was launched in 2006 as a way to let readers compare books and make recommendations. Through 2007, the site had about one million users. Earlier this summer, Amazon bought the used book markeplace Abebooks, which holds a 40% stake in Shelfari competitor LibraryThing. It was unclear if Amazon plans to join Shelfari and LibraryThing.

Penguin's Dutton imprint has paid seven figures for what it's dubbing a “digi-novel” by the creator of the C.S.I. television franchise. Dutton president Brian Tart made the deal. The multimedia three-book series by Anthony Zuiker will feature a mystery novel that will send readers to a Web site with companion footage relating to the plot. It will launch in fall 2009.

San Francisco Chronicle books editor Oscar Villalon is leaving the paper, having taken a buyout. Villalon's last day was August 29, and it is expected that deputy book editor Regan McMahon will now oversee the section, one of a handful of print stand-alone book review sections still running.

The CIA and HarperCollins have traded charges over the accuracy of Ron Suskind's The Way of the World. In a letter e-mailed August 22, the CIA charged that a number of claims made in the book are false and “profoundly offensive to the men and women who serve here.” Suskind responded by issuing a statement defending the accuracy of his work, while HC said it stands by the author and the book.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has released four reference titles as applications, or apps, for download to Apple's iPhone. The titles can all be purchased in Apple's App Store; the most expensive, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Ed., is priced at $29.99. The publisher plans to roll out a number of other apps in the coming months.