Jay Asher, author of the young adult novel Thirteen Reasons Why, filed a defamation lawsuit against the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, which in February 2018 indicated that he had been expelled from the organization the previous year after having been “found to have violated the SCBWI code of conduct in regard to harassment.” At the time, Asher said he remained a member in good standing of the organization. Filed January 18 in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Asher’s lawsuit claims that SCBWI executive director Lin Oliver and the organization made false and defamatory statements that harmed his career and […]
Archives for January 2019
ABA Town Hall: Stock Shortages, Minimum Wage, and More
On the final day of Winter Institute, ABA ceo Oren Teacher announced that next year’s event will take place in Baltimore on January 21-24, 2020. On Thursday morning, the ABA Town Hall began with an update from the diversity task force, which will become a permanent committee going forward. The group is working on a range of projects, including developing a mentorship program, creating a glossary of diversity and inclusion terms for booksellers, working with Edelweiss to add filters pertaining to diversity, and more. Afterward, the floor was was opened to booksellers, who raised a range of concerns. Sarah Pishko of […]
Buzz Books Spring/Summer Young Adult Preview
To help you sift through the many thousands of planned spring and summer titles, we’ve compiled a preview of the notable YA books, divided into fiction and nonfiction. You can sample some of the highlighted titles right now in Buzz Books 2019: Young Adult Spring/Summer; they are noted with an asterisk. Download our free Buzz Books collections in major ebookstores (the “download” button here links to them all). To get the trade editions — with publicity and marketing info, and click-throughs for full galleys, go to NetGalley. And please remember: because we prepare this preview many months in advance, titles, content, and publication dates are […]
Realistic Expectations at Winter Institute
ABA ceo Oren Teicher spoke to international attendees at a lunchtime session on The State of the U.S. Book Industry, as part of Wednesday’s opening day of Winter Institute (Wi14) in Albuquerque, NM. He struck a cautious note that echoed throughout the day, noting that indie booksellers had “a pretty consistent year,” with a 4.9 percent increase in sales, but didn’t see any particular bumps from this year’s blockbusters. He said, “Things are reasonably healthy. We are always cautious…. There’s good news for sure, but it’s also pretty fragile.” Teicher remarked on seeing younger faces among the more than 700 […]
Printer EPAC Wins Lawsuit Against Thomas Nelson, Awarded $15 Million in Damages
After a year of proceedings in Nashville’s U.S. District Court, a jury has ruled in favor of book printer EPAC Tech in its longstanding lawsuit (first filed in 2012) against former customer, Christian publisher Thomas Nelson. Finding Thomas Nelson guilty of breach of contract and fraudulent concealment, the jury awarded the printer $12 million in punitive damages and another $3 million in compensatory damages. Thomas Nelson had dropped EPAC eight months into an exclusive five-year contract to bind all its books, in favor of a cheaper option at Lightning Source, alleging that “EPAC was never able to show that it […]
Wattpad Launches Book Line, Radish Commissions Stories
Wattpad is building on their previous book publishing partnerships and experiments to launch their own book publishing line. Debuting in fall 2019 with six young adult titles, Wattpad Books will be distributed by Macmillan in the US and Raincoast Books in Canada. Ashleigh Gardner leads the division, with recently-hired Deanna McFadden managing operations. But the company says they will rely on machine learning to “identify and publish stand-out stories” from the Wattpad corpus, with the humans adding “special consideration for stories written by diverse authors.” Separately, Wattpad competitor Radish, which focuses on serialized short-form fiction for mobile, has hired Sue […]