VIZ expands its relationship with publishing powerhouse Simon & Schuster

After spending two years as the North American distributor for San Francisco-based VIZ Media’s manga and magazine titles, Simon & Schuster is expanding its role to take on the sales side. Under the agreement, New York-based S&S will handle domestic sales for all book lines produced by VIZ Media’s publishing division. The deal includes such top-selling titles as Fullmetal Alchemist, Naruto and Inuyasha. For its part, S&S will focus on growing the number of titles sold in traditional bookstore chains, as well as exploit newly emerging channels.

Fad titans combine to create Rubik’s Sudoku

The company that brought the world Rubik’s Cube is taking the classic pop culture icon and mixing it with this gen’s red-hot fad, Sudoku. Putting a new spin on the traditional pen-and-paper version, Danvers, Massachusetts-based Winning Moves Games has created Rubik’s Sudoku (US$12.95), combining the look of the cube with Sudoku gameplay. Moveable pieces with numbers in nine different colors are set on the board, and players try to arrange the nine-by-nine grid so that every row, column and three-by-three grid contains the numbers 1 through 9. The game also comes with a storage tray and a 40-page booklet with 100 starter puzzles, and will be hitting retail shelves this spring.