On Friday the Authors Guild joined the AAP in expressing outrage at the Internet Archive’s self-declared “emergency” powers to lend scanned, copyright books around the world without limitations. “IA has no rights whatsoever to these books, much less to give them away indiscriminately without consent of the publisher or author. We are shocked that the Internet Archive would use the Covid-19 epidemic as an excuse to push copyright law further out to the edges, and in doing so, harm authors, many of whom are already struggling.” Authors Guild president Doug Preston says in their post, “IA’s Open Library is giving […]
Archives for March 2020
HMH Reduces Salaries, Withdraws Guidance and More
Following yesterday’s news that HMH Books & Media had temporarily closed its Indiana distribution center as the state is on lockdown, parent HMH issued a business update, announcing a series of cutbacks. The “majority of employees” have been reduced to a four-day work week, at pro-rated pay, while directors and top executives have taken a 25 percent cut in base cash compensation. The ceo has taken a 50 percent reduction in base salary, and “senior leadership” has also taken unspecified salary reductions. They say that all of their warehouses and distribution centers, with additional facilities in Illinois, Missouri, and Florida, […]
People, Etc.
Shannon Marchese will join the Tommy Nelson children’s imprint as vp, publisher, starting April 13 and reporting to Laura Minchew. She was most recently executive editor at WaterBrook & Multnomah and Convergent. Kathy Wielgosz has joined Macmillan Children’s as production editor. She was most recently an assistant production editor at Little, Brown. The Book Industry Study Group has a brief survey posted on current and expected supply-chain issues in the wake of the pandemic, in advance of an April 9 online conversation moderated by members of the BISG board that will discuss challenges and opportunities across the book industry supply […]
Free Resources: More Updates
A lot of updates came in to our sharable, free web pages on resources and measures the publishing community is taking. Continue to let us know as you add initiatives and information. Also, publishers, since all of your new educational permissions policies vary slightly, try to post the complete guidelines somewhere on your website so that we can link to them, thanks. How to help booksellers — and authors [http://publun.ch/supportBooksellers] The New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association pledged a gift to BINC, on top of Abrams’ new gift and campaign. How educators can get publisher permissions [http://publun.ch/permissions] Updates from Macmillan, and Houghton […]
Audible Increases ACX Author Royalties, But Eliminates Promo Code Payments
Audible has temporarily increased author and narrator royalties to 45 percent on books by self-published ACX authors in an effort “to reduce the financial impact of COVID-19 on the creative community.” ACX audiobooks exclusively distributed through Audible, Amazon, and iTunes in April, May, and June are eligible for the full increase, while royalties on non-exclusively distributed titles will temporarily increase to 30 percent. Those using Royalty Share will be increased to 22.5 percent. Additionally, ACX has changed its promo code policy to eliminate royalties on titles obtained with a promo code “to address an unfortunate pattern of misuse of the […]
And Macmillan Withdraws From Book Expo As Well
If Reed Exhibitions stages a Book Expo and Book Con in late July, it will happen without any of the country’s five largest trade publishers. On Thursday, Macmillan joined the others in announcing that it, too, will not participate: “Due to an abundance of caution for our employee safety and guidance of the city and state, Macmillan Publishers has made the difficult decision to withdraw from BookExpo and BookCon 2020. While we are disappointed with the situation we are in, we promise to find other opportunities to interact with our booksellers, librarians, readers, and fans going forward.”