Apple reported fiscal second quarter sales after the close of the market on Tuesday, with strong iPhone sales and a rapidly expanding customer base in China continuing to drive the company to excellent results. iPad sales continued their decline, moving 12.6 million units — compared to 16.3 million units a year ago — with lifetime sales since 2010 now at roughly 273 million tablets. CEO Tim Cook told investors on the conference call, “We’re clearly seeing cannibalization from iPhone and on the other side, from the Mac. And of course, as I’ve said before, we’ve never worried about that. It […]
Archives for April 2015
Legal Briefs: Testing Self-Publishing Liability, and More
A couple whose picture was used without permission on the cover of the self-published novel A Gronking to Remember by Lacey Noonan has filed a suit that may further illuminate the extent to which the Communications Decency Act of 1996 shields ebooksellers that run their own self-publishing platforms. The plaintiffs have sued Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Noble along with author Noonan. The 1996 Act protects “interactive computer services” from liability as the publisher or speaker of information provided by another content provider — yet the act has exceptions for intellectual property law and communications privacy law. In a more […]
Writers Coffee Shop Owner Ordered To Set Aside $10M in Escrow In Fifty Shades Lawsuit
Two months after a Texas state court jury ruled that Jennifer Lynn Pedroza, former chief marketing officer of Australian publisher The Writers Coffee Shop, is entitled to a share of the proceeds from EL James’ FIFTY SHADES trilogy, state district judge Susan McCoy, ordered the defendant, TWCS founder Amanda Hayward, to deposit a minimum of $10 million into an escrow account until a final accounting determines how much Pedroza is actually owed. According to the Star-Telegram, a hearing last week “divulged that the e-publishing business that Hayward, Pedroza and two other women formed, which originally released what would become an international […]
People, Awards, Etc.
Acting publisher at Running Press Allison Devlin will move to Time Inc. Books on May 4 as associate publisher, Publishing Trends reports. Susan Weinberg will fill in as acting publisher at Running Press when Devlin leaves, until a permanent publisher is named. At HarperAudio, Sean McManus has been promoted to associate publisher. Marjacq Scripts in London has hired two new associate agents, Catherine Pellegrino and Georgie Bouz. Children’s book specialist Pellegrino had founded her own agency in 2011; Bouz was previously an editor at Penguin Random House UK and specializes in women’s commercial fiction, commercial literary fiction and commercial non-fiction. Foreign rights agent Sandra Sawicka will work as a primary agent as well. […]
Briefs
Carole DeSanti has been promoted to vp, executive editor at Viking/Penguin, returning full-time to acquisitions from the editor-at-large position she has held for the past several years. Distribution Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade Publishing will be distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books as of January 1, 2016, moving from current distributor Thomas Allen. In the US, Quercus is taking over distribution of the Teach Yourself line of self-instruction books and book-plus product, beginning June 1 with backlist titles and September 1 for frontlist. The line has been distributed by McGraw-Hill Education for the past 15 years.
Six Writers Drop Out As PEN Gala Hosts, Objecting to Charlie Hebdo Award
When PEN American Center hosts its annual gala on May 5, six of its planned author hosts will not be in attendance. On Friday, novelists Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner and Taiye Selasi alerted the organization of their withdrawal from the gala over the decision to award its Freedom of Expression Courage award to the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which saw 12 staffers killed in the January 7 attack on its offices. Prose told the AP she was “quite upset” at the Hebdo honor, adding: “I couldn’t imagine being in the audience when they […]