Hachette Book Group issued a statement this morning that the company is willing to support Text-to-Speech functionality more widely for the titles they publish in digital book format, citing the likelihood of TTS being a feature on an increasing number of devices due to be released in the coming months. “We have a primary duty to respect our authors’ wishes,” said Chairman and CEO David Young. “If our authors do not object,” he continued, “then, based on the current technology, we would not take issue with the availability of this functionality for the vast majority of our books, excluding books […]
Archives for July 2009
Preliminary Injunction Blocks Salinger Non-Sequel
Though preliminary injunctions blocking publication of a book are quite rare, Judge Deborah Batts was so thoroughly convinced that Fredrik Colting’s 60 YEARS LATER infringes CATCHER IN THE RYE that her decision didn’t even seem close. Her written opinion is a sweeping rejection of virtually every argument made on Colting’s behalf. “There is a substantial similarity between Catcher and 60 Years, as well as between the character Holden Caufield and the character Mr. C…such that it was an unauthorized infringement of plaintiff’s copyright.” She found that 60 Years “contains no reasonably discernable rejoinder or specific criticism of any character or […]
People
David Falk will join Touchstone Fireside as associate publisher on July 15, reporting to Stacy Creamer. Falk has over twenty years of publishing experience, most recently as associate publisher, director of sales and marketing at the Overlook Press. Margaret Halton is returning to the agency side of the business after work on an interim basis as adult rights director for Pan Macmillan. She is joining Rogers, Coleridge and White part-time, providing maternity cover for Laurence Laluyaux, the Bookseller reports. Previously Halton was foreign rights director at ICM’s UK office. Stephen Pawley has retired from Evans Publishing after 25 years as […]
Bloomsbury's Next Purchase: Academic Publisher Tottel
Bloomsbury’s latest strategic acquisition is professional and academic publisher Tottel, based in the UK and Ireland, to be bought for 9.96 million pounds. They will rename the unit Bloomsbury Professional. In the fiscal year ending in February, Tottel had sales of 6.25 million pounds, operating profit of 0.93 million pounds, and EBITDA of 1.19 million pounds. The company says: “Bloomsbury has identified academic and professional publishing as a growing niche sector. The proposed acquisition of Tottel fulfils a strategic objective of Bloomsbury in pursuing opportunities in this market and follows from the acquisitions of Methuen, Berg Publishers, and The Arden […]
People
Riccardo Cavellero is leaving Random House’s Spanish-language joint venture Random House Mondadori after eights years as ceo at the end of this year. Next January he will become general manager of Mondadori’s trade-book business worldwide, based in Milan. Markus Dohle and Mondadori ceo Maurizio Costa write that “we are committed to appointing a new ceo who will build upon our strengths as print-book publishers and also will lead us to become the No. 1 Spanish-language digital-book publisher. Kate Travers has joined powerHouse Books as marketing director. Most recently she was strategic marketing director at the Literary Ventures Fund and marketing […]
Announcements
Puffin UK has launched a WeMakeStories.com web site “for children to create, print and share a variety of innovative story forms,” calling it their “biggest digital initiative for children to date.” It’s a paid site, charging £5.99/$9.99 for access to those tools. “Members will be able to create pop-up books, customize audiobooks, design their own comics, produce exciting treasure maps and learn how to create a variety of entertaining adventures.” FiledBy has added “pre-publication” web pages to help authors build promotional awareness in advance of the release of their books.Announcement