The embargo on the Sarah Palin book was broken easily as the AP purchased an early copy yesterday. Among her claims that they cite: “Palin bitterly details how she was prevented from delivering a concession speech on election night, how she’d been kept “bottled up” from reporters during the campaign and prevented in many ways from just being herself. She also contends she was prepped to give non-answers during her debate with Joe Biden.” She calls Katie Couric “badgering” and “contends the anchor chose ‘gotcha’ moments while leaving the candidate’s more substantive remarks on the cutting room floor.” Also, “Palin […]
Archives for November 2009
Tracking the Takeoff of Twilight
Another round of Twilight interest is building with the release next Friday of the movie version of New Moon, and a rare appearance on Oprah today by author Stephenie Meyer. Time looks to chart the takeoff portion of Meyer’s career. Publisher Megan Tingley recalls when the book was published in fall 2005, “All the signs were there, but at the beginning they were modest. The sales kept getting a little higher each week. It wasn’t a gigantic phenomenon overnight — I think people think that now, but it wasn’t.” A year later, New Moon launched with a slightly higher print […]
Swede Offers "A Mountain of Dirty Laundry" In Rare Tell-All About Ikea
Former Ikea executive Johan Stenebo (who also spent time as personal assistant to company founder Ingvar Kamprad) is among the first to challenge the furniture-retailer’s glossy public image from the inside. Spiegel Online says the tell-all book “has attracted much attention in Sweden. It is the first time in the more than 60-year history of Ikea that negative comments have been made by a senior staff member in public. It’s clear that the book is some sort of payback: a mountain of dirty laundry divided into 14 chapters.” They add “the book claims that common preconceptions about Ikea and Kamprad […]
People
Harper UK publishing director Wayne Brookes is moving to Pan Macmillan as publishing director for fiction, reporting to publisher Jeremy Trevathan.
People: Snicket Follows Rich to LB Children's, and More
Harper Children’s executive editor Susan Rich has joined Little, Brown Children’s in the new position of editor-at-large, where she will edit the new series from Lemony Snicket, the YA novel by Daniel Handler, and other titles. Josh Getzler is moving to Russell & Volkening as an agent. He has been at Writers House for the past three years (prior to which he was coo of the Staten Island Yankees). He anticipates building his list of literary and commercial fiction, with a particular bias toward suspense and crime novels. Mary Jack Wald has announced her retirement at the end of this […]
Cengage Sues Houghton Over College Sale, Saying they Pumped Market with Cheap Books
Cengage Learning filed suit against Houghton Miffln Harcourt in a Manhattan Federal Court, seeking at least $20 million and alleging breach of warranty, misrepresentation and bad faith. They allege that Houghton pumped inexpensive college textbooks to international buyers with “known propensities to redistribute these textbooks back into the U.S. market through unauthorized distribution channels” prior to the sale of the division. They complain that those sales inhibited Cengage’s ability to sell to legitimate international distributors and poisoned the US market as those companies redistributed the cheap copies back into the home market. Cengage claims HMH agreed “to not behave ‘outside […]