Penguin Random House announced Tuesday morning that they finished 2015 in style, unloading the albatross of Author Solutions to an affiliate of Najafi Companies, for undisclosed terms. Former Penguin executive Andrew Phillips, who has been ceo of Author Solutions, is said to be staying with the self-publishing unit. PRH ceo Markus Dohle told employees in a note today, “We thank the entire Author Solutions team for their hard work and dedication during their time as part of Penguin Random House, and we wish them all the best and much success under the new ownership. “With this sale, we reaffirm our […]
Archives for January 2016
People, Etc.
At Picador, PJ Horoszko has been promoted to associate editor, while Isabella Alimonti moves up to associate publicist. In addition, Marlena Brown joins as publicist, working on fiction and nonfiction; she was previously at Oxford University Press and, before that, at HarperCollins. MacKenzie Fraser-Bub has joined Howard Morhaim Literary Agency. Previously she was an agent at Trident Media Group. Stacey Graham has joined Red Sofa Literary as an associate agent. Biagi Literary Management will handle all domestic and international subsidiary rights licensing for Polis Books, effective immediately. Amy Rosenbaum is joining the Nancy Yost Literary Agency as rights manager. She previously […]
The Print Bestsellers of 2015
As usual, here is our round-up of the top-selling print books of 2015, sold in outlets tracked by Nielsen Bookscan. They year recorded the same number of books selling 1 million units or more — six — as did 2014, but the distribution shifted, with four of those top sellers in adult fiction (whereas a year ago, five of the top six were juvenile/YA titles). Notably, Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer-winning novel sold more than four times as many print copies in 2015 as it did in 2014, when the book was first published. And with Veronica Roth and John Green giving up their […]
People, Etc.
Sarah Grimm has joined Crown as publicist, working on the Crown, Hogarth, Broadway, and Tim Duggan Books imprints. Previously she was an associate publicist at Putnam. Printz Award winner and two-time National Book Award finalist Gene Luen Yang has been named the new as National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. He says in the announcement, “I’m thrilled and humbled…. Reading breaks down the walls that divide us. By reading, we get to know people outside of our own communities. We gain knowledge others don’t expect us to have. We discover new and surprising passions. Reading is critical to our growth, both […]
Amazon’s January Picks
Amazon named Sunil Yapa’s Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist as their spotlight pick for January, and Andria Williams’s novel The Longest Night is their featured debut. The other top picks for January are: My Name Is Lucy Barton, by Elizabeth Strout The Geography of Genius, by Eric Weiner American Housewife, by Helen Ellis When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi Orphan X, by Gregg Hurwitz Bad News, by Anjan Sundaram Floodpath, by Jon Wilkman The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend, by Katarina Bivald The Road to Little Dribbling, by Bill Bryson
Authors Guild Asks Supreme Court to Review Google Books Ruling
As expected, and against heavy odds, the Authors Guild asked the Supreme Court to hear their appeal of the Google Books case. That request comes after sweeping defeats at the District Court and Appeals Court in the Second Circuit, where judges had little or no hesitation in declaring Google’s book scanning a “transformative” fair use. A related case against the HathiTrust — built on Google book scans — was dropped by the Guild after similar losses at the District and Appeals Court level. In their petition to the Supreme Court, attorneys for the Authors Guild position the case as in […]