Man Asian Literary Prize winner for the novel Please Look After Mom Shin Kyung-sook admitted that her short story “Legend,” published in a 1996 collection, copies from a work by the late Yukio Mishima. “As I compared the sentences I couldn’t believe it myself,” she told the Kyunghyang Shinmun newspaper. “I cannot trust my own memory” about reading Mishima, she said. “I sincerely apologize to the literary writer who raised the issue as well as all my acquaintances, and above all, many readers who read my novels…. Everything is my fault.” Changbi Publishers is removing the current edition of the story collection from the market and plans to release a new edition that omits the story in question.
GREY by EL James sold over 1.1 million copies in trade paperback, ebook, and audio editions in its first four days on sale, Vintage announced, with those sales “weighted a little more towards e than p, not unlike our experience with the trilogy at the outset,” Knopf Doubleday’s Paul Bogaards told us. The publisher has gone back to press for a fifth printing bringing the total number of copies in print to 2.1 million.
Bloomsbury announced a number of recent hires. Sara Kitchen has joined as production editor. She was senior manager, production editorial at Skyhorse Publishing. Donna Gautier has been hired as inventory manager across all of Bloomsbury USA, coming over from McGraw-Hill Education. Nick Parker will take over as sales director, Latin America, Caribbean and Canada on June 29. Most recently he was at Oxford University Press.
Joe Kreuser recently joined Bloomsbury Academic as marketing manager responsible for Philosophy, History and Linguistics lists in the US. Previously he was a marketing manager at Routledge. Jessica Tackett has joined Bloomsbury Academic in the new position of conferences and events coordinator to manage the company’s presence at academic conferences globally. Previously she was at Cultural Vistas, a German-American professional exchange program. Finally, Laura Ewen has been named marketing associate working on the Literary Studies and Drama lists. She was at Johns Hopkins University Press.
Alexander Bukovietski has joined Eerdmans has production editor. Previously he ran In a Word, a publishing services company in St. Louis, Montana.
Jackee Alston is leaving the Erin Murphy Literary Agency, where she was social media coordinator, at the end of June pursue other endeavors. Tara Gonzalez, assistant to Erin Murphy, will take over as social media coordinator on July 1.
Noted
The new Tim Duggan Books imprint at Crown is said to include formal fact-checking as part of their publisher services, according to a NY Magazine piece: “Duggan declined to discuss his imprint yet, and one agent describes the fact-checking policy as ‘in flux.’ But for months, Duggan has been quietly promoting in-house fact-checking as a special feature of his new shop. New York Times reporter Scott Shane confirms that his book, Objective Troy — the second on Duggan’s list — was fact-checked by Andy Young, an experienced freelancer hired by Crown.”