Recently-fired deputy director of the FBI Andrew McCabe recently sold a book proposal…to someone, represented by Todd Shuster at Aevitas Creative Management, reported by the NYT and confirmed by unsuccessful bidders. Next Tuesday’s release of Amy Chozick‘s CHASING HILLARY: Ten Years, Two Presidential Campaigns, and One Intact Glass Ceiling has already drawn a pre-pub review in the Washington Post and coverage in the Daily Beast. Chozick reports Clinton as unsurprised when told she had lost the election to Trump: “I knew it. I knew this would happen to me,” Chozick quotes her as saying. “They were never going to let me be […]
Archives for April 2018
People, Etc.
At Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Becky Saikia-Wilson has been promoted to svp, trade associate publisher. Lyndsay Calusine has been promoted to lead designer on the creative services, design and promotion team. Penny Scott-Bayfield will join Bloomsbury as group finance director on July 16, taking over from Wendy Pallot, who will step down on that day. Scott-Bayfield is currently finance director at Conde Nast Britain. Mary Cate Stevenson and Noah Nofz, who operate a Houston, TX-based digital media marketing company Two Cats Communications, started working for the ABA in March as part-time social media coordinators. Book Expo Book Expo announced two new panels: […]
Bestseller Business: Persecution, and Preorders
Dennis Prager is the latest author to ask for attention by claiming ideological persecution when he did not appear on the New York Times best seller list — even though his publisher Regnery famously proclaimed last year it would no longer refer to the Times lists in its marketing and promotion. (On the one hand, Prager writes, “I don’t pay attention to it,” though he follows that by contradicting himself: “But I paid attention last week to see if my recently published book…was on the list.”) Amusing within our little village is that Prager enumerates how The Rational Bible: Exodus was […]
Bezos Reveals Amazon Stats — On Prime Members, and Big Kindle Earners
Amazon ceo Jeff Bezos released his annual shareholder letter on Wednesday, revealing for the first time that has more than 100 million paid Prime members globally. In another, less widely-reported statistic, Bezos wrote that over 1,000 Kindle Direct Publishing authors earned over $100,000 in royalties in 2017 (thus comprising over $100 million). Beyond that, third-party sellers accounted for more than half of the units sold on Amazon worldwide for the first time — and over 140,000 small and medium-sized businesses (thus comprising over $14 billion). Among other things, in reviewing the pipeline for television series on the way through Prime […]
Regan Says HarperCollins Would Not Allow Janice Dickinson to Accuse Bill Cosby of Rape In Memoir
Publisher Judith Regan testified in the retrial of Bill Cosby on sexual-assault charges in Norristown, PA on Wednesday, supporting Janice Dickinson’s account that she had long claimed Cosby raped her, even though that’s not what her 2002 memoir No Lifeguard on Duty said. “I remember at one point she [Dickinson] told me she’d been raped by Mr. Cosby, drugged and raped, and she wanted to include that in the book,” Regan said on the stand. “And at that time I told her…after conversations with the legal department, without corroboration those sorts of stories would be impossible to publish because of […]
Former Perseus Executives Sue to Collect Sale Bonuses
In mid-March, the three top former executives of the Perseus Books Group — ceo David Steinberger, cfo Charles Gallagher and cmo Rick Joyce — sued Perseus Books, LLC and Centre Lane Partners, the private equity company that had owned the publisher, in New York State Supreme Court. They are seeking payment of additional stay bonuses and membership share interests due that were to be based on the final “net sale proceeds” from the spring 2016 sales of Perseus Books to Hachette Book Group, and Perseus Distribution to Ingram Content Group. The case is before Judge Barry Ostrager, who had presided […]