Macmillan issued a 30-day progress report to Latinx activist organization #DignidadLiteraria as promised in their February 4 meeting. At that meeting, #DignidadLiteraria, representatives from Present.org, and a panel of authors discussed their concerns about Latinx representation in publishing with Flatiron Books president Bob Miller, Macmillan president Don Weisberg, and representatives from other Macmillan imprints. On recruitment and retention, Macmillan wrote, “We recently expanded our HR team to include a new full-time staff person dedicated to recruiting efforts. She will be a resource in expanding our candidate pool to include underrepresented groups.” The publisher says they are continuing to review “our existing […]
Archives for March 2020
The Audible Settlement Is Finally Public
Audible and the seven publishers who sued the company over its planned Captions feature — referred to as an Audiobooks-to-Text Service in the filings — complied with Judge Valerie Caproni’s request to make public the settlement, with only the amounts redacted. The published agreement reaffirms that Audible will make a monetary settlement payment to each of the litigating publishers, and reinforces that they will not caption books by AAP members without permission. The redacted portion reads: “In consideration of the Parties’ performance hereunder, Audible agrees to pay each of the Publishers the amount of [REDACTED] (the “Settlement Payment”), equaling a […]
In American Dirt Book Club Episodes, Oprah Puts “Herself on Trial”
That’s the assessment of AP reporter Hillel Italie, who attended the taping of the two-part filming of Oprah’s Book Club discussion of AMERICAN DIRT and the controversy around the book. The shows are available for streaming from Apple TV+ on Friday, March 6. “She turned the forum into a debate about the marginalization of Latino voices, the lack of diversity in publishing and the question of who is best suited to tell a given story.” The AP spoke to Winfrey after the taping and she said, “This has taken up a lot of my energy, a lot of her (Cummins’) […]
Book Expo Knows You’re Already Worried About Their Show (and Maybe Mad At Reed), So Issues Update, While Staying On Track
Book Expo officials are moving to get in front of community concerns about COVID-19, following the London Book Fair’s reluctant cancellation of their show. (Both shows are part of Reed Exhibitions.) Event director Jenny Martin writes in a statement, “The effect of the COVID-19 virus on the publishing business and our people is significant and difficult to navigate. Many industry events outside of the United States, have had to make difficult decisions about proceeding with their events. We understand the impact that has on the publishing industry and we want to be proactive and transparent about BookExpo.” For now: “BookExpo […]
The Shoe Drops at ViacomCBS, Which Will Explore Sale of Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster ceo Carolyn Reidy wrote to staff Wednesday morning “to let you know that today ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish announced that the company is beginning the process by which ViacomCBS will potentially sell Simon & Schuster.” Bakish was speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference in San Francisco: “We’ve been conducting a portfolio review of our company. And coming out of that we’ve made the determination that Simon and Schuster is not a core asset of the company. It is not video based; it doesn’t have significant connectivity to our broader business. At the same […]
The Fair Is Cancelled But Pre-London Dealmaking Has Been Steady, If Modest In Investment
As regular readers know, we chart the domestic dealmaking data ahead of both the London and Frankfurt Book Fairs. Ordinarily we would provide a first look this Friday and then follow up next Wednesday, but with the cancellation of LBF, we wanted to see how the dealmaking trends have been lining up. The good news is that deal volumes are looking strong overall, only 5.5 percent below last year’s final pre-London total, so likely to finish well ahead of last year. Fiction deals have already rebounded, running 8.6 percent ahead of last year’s final total. And debut fiction deals are […]