Borders has nominated the five new directors who will stand for election in September to take over from the currently-serving directors who are scheduled to step down: Paul Brown, a unit present at Hilton; Ronald Floto, president, FLT International; Michael Grossman, ceo, Tempo Payments; Dan Rose, a vp at Facebook; and Timothy Wolf, chief integration officer at MillerCoors.Release Higher-Ed online bookstore Akademos has secured $2.5 million funding from Kohlberg Ventures, which they will use “to meet rapidly growing demand for its online bookstore and marketplace services.” Additionally eHarmony chief marketing officer Scott Eagle and Kohlberg partner Bill Youstra have joined […]
Archives for August 2009
People
FinePrint Literary Management has hired Laura Wood and Ward Calhoun as agents and Jacqueline Murphy as in-house subsidiary rights director. Wood was most recently associate publisher of Council Oak Books, the latest step in a 20-year career in publishing. She will specialize in serious nonfiction (science and nature, business, history, religion) as well as commercial fiction with a fantastical twist and high-concept science fiction. Calhoun has been a senior editor at Hylas Publishing, and will focus on sports, humor, and pop culture books. Murphy was most recently executive audio editor at Harper Media but prior to that she was longtime […]
Authors Guild Advises that William Morris Endeavor Settlement Memo "Contains Several Errors"
Following news that WME was advising clients to opt out of the Google Books settlement, the Authors Guild posted an advisory asserting “several errors that are likely to sow some confusion.” They write: “William Morris’s principal mistake is that it appears to think that the uses that the settlement permits Google to make are interminable. This leads the agency to draw a series of erroneous conclusions…. Most fundamentally, it leads the agency to conclude that authors are limited in their dealings with Google to the settlement’s terms, unless the court changes those terms. It’s wrong, on all counts.” The Guild […]
The Most Marketplace: Making Contact
Inspired by a weekend Twitter post from agent Collen Lindsay (“Book Editors: Make sure your listing in Publishers Marketplace is current. It’s free for you to add your contact info”) today’s PublishersMarketplace.com feature highlight is on our popular Contact database. Increasingly the database is used as the “industry phone book” for daily contacts, and our own query audits confirm that the majority of searches is indeed agents and editors looking for each other. We answer about 1,200 contact queries a day, making it one of our most popular features, and the database is available to members only (so it cannot […]
On the Google Settlement: Washington Post (for), William Morris Endeavor (Against-ish)
On the Google Settlement: Washington Post (for), William Morris Endeavor (Against-ish)On Saturday the Washington Post weighed in with their long-awaited editorial on the Google Books Settlement. They like it on the whole (“settlement is in many ways better for consumers than the possible outcome of litigation”) though think the clause that blocks the Registry “from offering a better deal to any of the company’s competitors within its first 10 years” is curious and wish it weren’t there. But what does it say that the editorial board doesn’t understand the settlement correctly in the first place? They believe that the Registry […]
Lunch Weekly for Monday, August 10
Deal Reports Just e-mail to deals@PublishersMarketplace if you aren’t using the online form linked below. Report a deal using the online form The Key As usual, the handy key to our Lunch deal categories. While all reports are always welcome, those that include a category will generally receive a higher listing when it comes time to put them all together. “nice deal” $1 – $49,000 “very nice deal” $50,000 – $99,000 “good deal” $100,000 – $250,000 “significant deal” $251,000 – $499,000 “major deal” $500,000 and up FICTION Debut Rainbow Rowell’s FLAGGED, a fresh take on the office comedy in […]