At Macmillan Children’s, Allison Verost has been promoted to senior vice president, deputy publisher. Claire Fletcher has been promoted to senior managing editor, children’s at Chronicle Books. Zoey Cole has joined Scribner as an associate marketing manager. Previously, was a bookseller and events assistant at Books Are Magic. Kate Hutchison, director of business development and strategy at LSC Communications, has left the company. She is currently “seeking consulting opportunities and focusing on her podcast, Shelf-Care,” which will launch this fall. She can be reached at bookishkatenyc@gmail.com. In the UK, WH Smith’s international chairman and business development director Louis de Bourgoing […]
Archives for July 2019
Disclosing A Second Shareholder Suit, Barnes & Noble Says Both “Lack Merit”
Barnes & Noble formally updated their tender offer documents to acknowledge the shareholder suit from Richard Scarantino, and a similar separate suit filed by David Shaev on July 17, also alleging the company did not disclose certain required information in their offer. BN notes, “The defendants believe that these complaints lack merit but cannot predict the outcome of these matters.”
Simon & Schuster Objects to Audible’s “Unauthorized and Brazen Infringement,” As Does AAP
Simon & Schuster spokesperson Adam Rothberg provided a response to Audible’s new initiative that shows listeners a computer-generated transcription of the text of an audiobook as they listen: “We have informed Audible that we consider its Captions program to be an unauthorized and brazen infringement of the rights of authors and publishers, and a clear violation of our terms of sale. We have therefore insisted that Audible not include in Captions any titles for which Simon & Schuster holds audio or text rights.” Separately, AAP president and ceo Maria Pallante issued a statement in which she called the new Audible […]
Shareholder Sues Over Barnes & Noble Sale; F+W UK Books Business Sold
Investor Richard Scarantino filed suit in a Delaware Federal Court against Barnes & Noble, seeking class action status on behalf of stockholders, arguing that the company’s tender offer solicitation “omits material information with respect to the Proposed Transaction, which renders the Solicitation Statement false and misleading.” From a Google search, filing lawsuits just like this one is the primary activity for which Scarantino is known. In particular, he charges that the statement left out “material information regarding the company’s financial projections” for the future. As well, he alleges it left out certain details about the financial analyses performed by financial […]
Amazon Has Been Working On Retail Stores Since 2012
Brad Stone and Matt Day have a deep look at Amazon’s slowly evolving efforts to open and scale their own physical stores, which began with a “top-secret project to revolutionize grocery stores” started back in 2012. Those efforts, curtailed and modified, are what led to the Amazon Go checkout-less convenience stores. They are up to only 14 locations and still “some Go stores seem almost deserted except for the lunchtime rush. Employees familiar with Amazon’s internal projections say the outlets in Chicago, in particular, are falling short of expectations, and the company has had to resort to raffles and giveaways […]
Publishers Respond to Audible’s Planned Infringement
The publishing community is responding with appropriate alarm to the preview of Audible Captions, a forthcoming feature that will show listeners a computer-generated transcription of the text of an audiobook as they listen. A USA Today piece mentioned just three particular in-copyright titles set to be captioned (though it says the feature “will be available on hundreds of thousands of audiobooks at launch”). Two of those are Penguin Random House titles: Michelle Obama’s BECOMING and the late Chester Himes’s A RAGE IN HARLEM (the latter is sold in audio as an Audible Studios production narrated by Samuel L. Jackson). A […]