Amazon made a declaration of support for a lawsuit filed by the Washington state attorney general in Federal Court looking to overturn President Trump’s recent executive order limiting immigration from seven countries as unconstitutional. The first state to file suit, Washington is also seeking a temporary restraining order against enforcement of the order. Amazon indicated it was aware of 49 US-based employees who are from one of the countries targeted by the president’s order. In an email to employees, ceo Jeff Bezos noted, “We are working other legal options as well.” Bezos told staff, “This executive order is one we do not […]
Archives for January 2017
Digital: Shelfie Shutters, Radish Raises
Shelfie, the ebook bundling app that provided users with ebooks to go along with some of the print books they already own, told users with almost no notice that the service will close today. Founded as BitLit, the Vancouver-based company had received seed funding former Kobo ceo Michael Serbinis among others. In contrast, mobile app-based short-form serialized fiction platform Radish formally announced having raised $3 million in seed financing from funders including UTA, Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, and Amy Tan, among others. Larry Kirshbaum is serving as a senior adviser.
People
At Picador USA, Anna DeVries has been promoted to executive editor. Susan Hawk will move to Upstart Crow Literary as an agent on February 1. She has been at The Bent Agency. Christina Jeffries has been promoted to vp, director, national accounts, mass merchandise sales at Random House Children’s. Former HarperCollins India publisher V.K. Karthika has joined Westland as publisher. Amazon bought control of the company last October. A spokesperson told HuffPost India she will “head a newly-formed division at Westland, focusing on literary and mainstream fiction and non-fiction.” Oprah Winfrey is returning to network television — as a special contributor to […]
Buzz Books Spring/Summer Preview: Nonfiction
Our Buzz Books 2017 Spring/Summer sampler alone is full of excerpts from great forthcoming nonfiction by Roxane Gay, Richard Ford, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, Kate Moore, Gerda Saunders, and more — and as usual, our free ebook starts with a broad view of the forthcoming publishing season that highlights hundreds of new books of note on the way. Don’t have yours yet? The consumer edition is featured on the iBooks home screen (and the trade editions are featured on NetGalley’s home page). With Winter Institute 12 finishing up today in Minneapolis, we’re continuing to presenting extracts from the seasonal preview included at the beginning of Buzz Books 2017. […]
People, Etc.
At Portfolio and Sentinel, Bria Sandford has been promoted to senior editor. Former longtime chairman of Canongate for 22 years (and stepfather of Jamie Byng) Christopher Bland, 78, died on Sunday of prostate cancer. He also had served as chair of the BBC board of governors and the Royal Shakespeare Company, and published two novels in the past few years. The UK’s Women’s Prize for Fiction is looking for a new sponsor after Bailey’s said it had “regretfully decided to make way for a new sponsor” after this year’s award. They took over sponsorship of what had been the Orange Prize in 2014. Chief […]
NYT Promises Expanded Coverage of Comics and Graphic Novels
There are a few updates on the big paring of the New York Times bestseller lists that we covered yesterday. Following our observations noting a few significant changes in the posted methodology (including the elimination of weighting sales from indie bookstores, and allowing the counting of sales from Amazon-exclusive ebooks), a NYT spokesperson confirmed to us that indeed “the methodology was updated to reflect changes to the lists.” A follow-up asking for confirmation that they have dropped the ban on counting certain prosaic types of evergreen nonfiction was not answered, but on Twitter yesterday NYTBR editor Pamela Paul did write, “Just to be […]