Emma Patterson and Emily Forland will join Brandt & Hochman as agents effective January 1. Both Patterson and Forland were previously with the Wendy Weil Agency, and were the two principal agents looking after the agency’s business following Weil’s death in September. Amber Qureshi is joining Seven Stories as associate publisher and executive editor in January. She was most recently an executive editor at Viking. Korea will be the “market focus” country at the London Book Fair in 2014.
Archives for December 2012
Children’s Trends for 2013 and More
Editors at Scholastic’s book fairs and clubs along with their trade editors have released a forecast of 10 top trends in children’s books for 2013. They say bullying is “the timely topic,” and also look for biographies, Civil War anniversary books and survival stories in nonfiction. In fiction they say to keep a watch out for more strong girl protagonists; novels in cartoon form; and sci-fi. The year’s big movie tie-ins include film releases of Scott Orson Card’s Ender’s Game, Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl’s Beautiful Creatures, Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments, and the latest Percy Jackson adaptation, Sea of Monsters. […]
Overlook Sues In Attempt to Affirm Right to Publish eBook Edition of Bulgakov’s MASTER AND MARGARITA
Overlook has filed suit against the grandchildren of Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov claiming that the ebook edition of MASTER AND MARGARITA does not violate copyright, Courthouse News reports. (The full complaint is not yet available in any federal court docket.) Overlook acquired the US copyright to Bulgakov’s classic novel (written in 1937 but not published until 1967, more than 25 years after Bulgakov’s death) in 2001 when it bought Ardis Press, which originally commissioned the book’s current English-language translation in 1995. Though Overlook “acknowledges that Bulgakov’s grandchildren own rights to the underlying copyright,” they dispute the heirs’ contention that the […]
People, Etc.
At Penguin Group’s Portfolio, Sentinel, and Current imprints, Kristen Gastler has been hired as a senior publicist (she was at Doubleday). Margot Stamas has moved over to the group as a publicist from Putnam and Riverhead; Christy D’Agostini has been promoted to senior publicist; and Jacquelynn Burke has been promoted to publicist. Last Friday Gawker “published here for the first time” Lena Dunham‘s highly-designed and illustrated 66-page book proposal, which you think would be protected by copyright. (They also dragged Scribd.com into the potential infringement by using the service to host and post the PDF.) When we contacted Random House […]
Wiley Takes Writedown On Weak Interest In Trade Assets; Reduces Earnings Guidance
Wiley’s second quarter earnings report comes clean about the weakness of the trade publishing assets they have been trying to sell. The second deal–in which Houghton Mifflin Harcourt bought their culinary line and the CliffsNotes and Webster’s New World Dictionary businesses–yielded just $11 million. Wiley has taken a writedown of “approximately $16 million,” reflecting a reduced value for both the assets bought by HMH as well as the “realizable value” of the grab-bag of other trade books still up for sale, which includes titles on pets, crafts, nautical and general interest. That loss is balanced by a $10 million gain […]
Simon & Schuster Also Moves to New Agency Lite Pricing
Over the weekend Simon & Schuster became the last of the three Settlers (publishers settling the ebook pricing case with the Department of Justice) to implement new Agency Lite ebook pricing and new sales contracts with ebook retailers. As with the other Settlers, the best place to research S&S’s new pricing is on the publisher’s own web site. Amazon is not showing their ebook list prices, though Barnes & Noble is; also as with the others, Amazon shows that Simon & Schuster is still the seller of record. To be clear, since other articles have already made this mistake, Simon […]