Maris Kreizman will join Barnes & Noble as director of editorial content for BN.com on June 4. She was most recently audiobooks editor at eMusic. At S&S Children’s, Bridget Madsen has been promoted to managing editor and Ellen Grafton moves up to assistant managing editor. In addition, Jenica Nasworthy moves up to senior production editor, and Craig Adams has been promoted to production editor. Author, publishing consultant, music producer, and co-founder of the Rock Bottom Remainders Kathi Kamen Goldmark, 63, died Thursday morning of cancer. She founded Goldmark Media Escorts in 1983, which handed more than 500 authors touring the […]
Archives for May 2012
Pottermore Sells More Direct; Admits Amazon “Got It” Without Any Special Negotiation
Pottermore head Charlie Redmayne offered a couple of new tidbits in an interview with Laura Hazard Owen at Wednesday’s Paid Content conference. He said that “over 50 percent of the sales” of Harry Potter ebooks so far “are coming direct” through the Pottermore site. Redmayne had originally “estimated that a high percentage of the sales would come from” the ebookstores they partnered with. (He didn’t specify whether he meant all ebook sales, or just the English-language edition.) Also, confirming the line of reasoning we have taken from the start–and in contrast to some trade accounts that have tried to depict […]
Apple Denies Justice’s Pricing Conspiracy Charges, Says “The Government Sides with Monopoly”
On Tuesday, Apple filed their answer the Department of Justice’s complaint against the company in the agency ebook pricing action, taking direct aim against the government’s choices and motives. “The Government sides with monopoly, rather than competition, in bringing this case. The Government starts from the false premise that an eBooks ‘market’ was characterized by ‘robust price competition’ prior to Apple’s entry. This ignores a simple and incontrovertible fact: before 2010, there was no real competition, there was only Amazon. At the time Apple entered the market, Amazon sold nearly nine out of every ten eBooks, and its power over […]
Forthcoming: More Woodward, and TARP Inspector
The AP notices that online booksellers are listing Bob Woodward‘s latest, currently untitled (and undescribed) book as publishing on September 12 from Simon & Schuster. Free Press just announced that on July 24 they will publish former watchdog of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) Neil Barofsky‘s BAILOUT: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street. They say “Barofsky recounts how his reports of a wave of criminal mortgage fraud and other abuses being perpetrated against homeowners in connection with programs that the Treasury itself set up were ignored time and again.”
People, Etc.: Loh, Fussell, and More
Sterling Publishing continues to empty out, as editorial director of Sterling Children’s Splinter imprint Cindy Loh moves to serve as publishing director of Bloomsbury Children’s (including the Walker Books line) starting June 4. Emily Easton, promoted to publishing director of Walker Children’s, and Michelle Nagler, editorial director of Bloomsbury Children’s, will report to Loh, as will creative director Donna Mark and senior managing editor Melissa Kavonic. At Simon & Schuster Children’s, Alyson Heller has been promoted to associate editor. Literary critic and cultural historian Paul Fussell, 88, died Wednesday in Medford, OR of natural causes in a long-term care facility, where he’d spent […]
ICM Management Completes Buyout; New Partners Include 3 NYC Literary Agents
The turbulent buyout of ICM by its management that was announced as an agreement in principle in December 2011 has been completed. Previous controlling investor Rizvi Traverse Management and former chairman and ceo of ICM Jeffrey Berg have sold their stakes in the agency “and neither will participate in the management of the agency or serve on the agency’s Board” going forward. The WSJ indicates both RTM and Berg received “a combination of cash and preferred non-voting shares.” Traverse purchased its share in the agency, said to be a 40 percent stake, in 2005 for $75 million (and $25 million […]