The IDPF announced the Readium Project, an open source initiative “to develop a comprehensive reference implementation of the ePUB 3 standard,” built on the WebKit rendering engine. The project is designed to “significantly accelerate EPUB 3 adoption and increase implementation consistency,” IDPF executive director Bill McCoy says. It has wide support from many organizations and etailers–though not Apple, or Amazon (which is not an IDPF member). Library City has a follow-up q&a with McCoy. Among his remarks, “given that PDF support is increasingly built-in to browsers (e.g. Chrome ships with PDF support) it’s logical to imagine built-in EPUB support in […]
Archives for February 2012
People
Perseus Books Group announced what ceo David Steinberger calls “a strategically important new hire that reflects our profound commitment to our people.” Starting today, David Bronstein joins the company in the new position of chief talent officer, reporting to Steinberger. Bronstein has worked previously at Omnicom Media, Universal Music and MTV Networks. HR director Lindsey Pullen will report to Bronstein. He is charged with developing a more systemmatic approach to “attracting, developing and retaining the most capable people at every level of the company,” which currently employees approximately 600 people across all locations. Steinberger says that with “limitless opportunities to […]
Mortenson Says He’s Protecting All Authors In Looking for Dismissal of Lawsuit; Plaintiffs Point to James Frey Case
Legal filings have been piling up in the case seeking class action status against Greg Mortenson, his co-author, publisher Penguin and the charity that Morteson established. The case for dismissal as argued by Mortenson’s attorneys does not address the substance of the allegations–that his story is fraudulent–but rather focuses on numerous issues of legal standing. They note that they plaintiffs have amended and refiled their claims five times now, continuing to look for different basis on which to sue. The current complaint has 11 causes of action; “earlier versions…including different plaintiffs, were 8, 9, 10 and 13 pages long with […]
People, Etc.
At Dial Books for Young Readers, Kathy Dawson has been promoted to vp, editorial director. Jennifer Gonzalez is joining the Macmillan sales department in the new position of vp, children’s sales, starting March 5 and reporting to president of sales Alison Lazarus. She has been director of sales, mass merchants at Random House, and prior to that she was director of sales, mass market and brand initiatives for Candlewick Press. She will be responsible for all children’s sales from Macmillan Children’s as well as their distributed publishers. Reporting to Gonzalez, Mark Von Bargen is being promoted to senior director, trade sales for […]
Penguin Withdraws From Overdrive; Looks For New Library Partners
Penguin announced late Thursday that as of February 10 (today) it “will no longer offer additional copies of ebooks and audiobooks for purchase via Overdrive” and is severing their ongoing relationship with the vendor. Libraries will continue to have access to titles they have already purchased, and Penguin is negotiating a “continuance agreement” with Overdrive to service the products that have already been sold. The move is an outgrowth of the publisher’s suspension of sales of new titles to libraries in late November. At the time they said that “due to new concerns about the security of our digital editions, we […]
eNews: BN Makes Progress In Nook Patent Lawsuit Against Chipmaker; eSales Figures From McAfee, Wilkinson; And More
As part of a separate lawsuit in which Barnes & Noble pre-emptively sued chipmaker LSI to mitigate against accusations that the Nook e-reader line infringed on the company’s patents, Judge Edward Chen of California’s Northern District denied LSI’s motions to dismiss 8 of BN’s defenses, including “non-infringement, invalidity, unenforceability, persecution history estoppel/judicial estoppel, no injunctive relief, license and failure to state a claim.” Chen said BN “had adequately pleaded factual allegations of misconduct by Lucent, LSI’s predecessor, which included failure to disclose rules of standard-setting organizations” and that the conduct could fall under the grounds of unforceability. “Indeed, a contrary […]