The big weekend read was the NYT piece with allegations about Amazon‘s “purposeful Darwinism” towards its employees. Jeff Bezos sent an email to all employees — and thus the world — saying, “Even if it’s rare or isolated, our tolerance for any such lack of empathy needs to be zero.” Bezos agreed that “anyone working in a company that really is like the one described in the NYT would be crazy to stay. I know I would leave such a company.” But “Hopefully, you’re having fun working with a bunch of brilliant teammates, helping invent the future, and laughing along the way.”
Separately, on Saturday Amazon said their monthly shared-payment pool for KDP Select titles was $11.5 million, keeping to the approximate rate of .0058 cents for every page read in ebooks borrowed through KU or KOLL.
In other news, the late Ivan Doig‘s final book Last Bus to Wisdom will be published tomorrow, and Riverhead is commemorating the 18th as Ivan Doig Day. The Seattle Times says that “celebrations will take place at nine independent bookstores around the West, including three in Montana, one in Portland, one in San Francisco and one in Utah” and three in Doig’s home of Seattle.
Matt Wise has been named director of publishing for Blumhouse Books, the horror film studio’s publishing venture with Doubleday. Wise was an agent at Foundry Literary + Media.