At Johns Hopkins University Press, Davida Breier has been promoted to director, Hopkins Fulfillment Services and Hopkins Sales Partners, and Terrence Melvin to customer service and operations manager, Hopkins Fulfillment Services. Heidi Vincent has joined as business development and sales manager, Hopkins Sales Partners. Most recently, she was vice president of marketing for books at National Geographic.
Ellis Avery, 46, author of works including The Last Nude and The Teahouse Fire, has died.
Book Expo
Rachel Maddow will host the Book Expo adult author breakfast on Thursday, May 30, and announce her new book. The panel will feature: Malcolm Gladwell (Talking to Strangers), Karin Slaughter (The Last Widow), Marjorie Liu (Monstress), and Ta-Nehisi Coates, who will preview his first novel The Water Dancer, forthcoming from from One World on September 24.
Legal
Barnes and Noble filed a memorandum of law Friday in opposition to former CEO Demos Parneros’ motion for a 50 percent advancement of his total attorney fees to fight the bookseller’s three counterclaims against him. BN’s memo calls 50 percent “wildly overreaching” and “not grounded in any right provided under his employment agreement, Barnes & Noble’s bylaws, or New York and Delaware law.” (Parneros had landed on 50 percent with the thinking that asserting his own claims and defending himself against the company’s counterclaims “will involve work primarily relating to issues relevant to both.”)
Apparently during negotiations, BN had offered Parneros a 20 percent advancement, alongside requirements that he pay pre-judgement interest, and provide an undertaking and attorney timesheets, but Parneros refused to budge on his demand for 50 percent. In the memo, BN repeated its support for the lesser allocation, with all the same provisos.
BN argues that only two of the three counterclaims — those brought against him in his official capacity as a corporate officer — are even potentially advanceable. Further, “Plaintiff seeks a windfall that was never intended by the indemnification statutes,” which weren’t put in place to protect officers against claims of misconduct by their own employers.