“To make a real difference for the nation and the world,” the Internet Archive unilaterally granted itself emergency powers to lend a corpus of over 1.4 million ebooks without any restrictions, contrary to its own stated policies. They are calling it a “National Emergency Library to serve the nation’s displaced learners,” lasting at least through June 30. In a modest concession, authors can opt their books out [send an email to info@archive.org with National Emergency Library Removal Request as the subject line. Please include each URL of the book or books you would like to have removed]. They also “recognize […]
Archives for March 2020
Hachette Book Group Also Withdraws From Book Expo
Hachette has joined Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, and HarperCollins in withdrawing from Book Expo and Book Con. They wrote in a statement on Thursday, “With the impact of the coronavirus still an unknown, Hachette Book Group has decided to withdraw our participation in Book Expo and BookCon 2020 in the interest of the health and well-being of our employees and authors. We’ll miss having the opportunity to engage with booksellers, librarians, and readers but are committed to finding new ways to connect these audiences with our books and authors.”
Status: Indiana Warehouses, Canadian Book Printers
Following Indiana’s stay-at-home order, HMH Books & Media has temporarily closed their distribution center in Indianapolis, IN until April 6, per the timeframe in the order. During this time, HMH will hold all orders in process. While that order does allow “fulfillment centers” to operate as “essential infrastructure,” the company says “our top priority is the community’s safety and we will continue to assess and will ask folks to return in order to fulfill essential needs.” President Ellen Archer said, “We have taken the preliminary step to close our Indiana distribution center in order to comply with the spirit of […]
People, Etc.
Director, Canada sales, Macmillan Hank Cochrane is moving to Picador as vp and associate publisher as of April 6. He will oversee the Picador list, and report to publisher of FSG and Picador Mitzi Angel, with a dotted line to Holt president and publisher Amy Einhorn. Angel says in the announcement, “Many of us at FSG, Holt, and St. Martin’s Press know Hank for his good humor, his intelligence, and his commitment to our books. With his deep publishing expertise and excellent understanding of the marketplace, he is the ideal leader to guide and grow our best-in-class paperback list.” Newly […]
Whiting Award Winners Named
The 2020 Whiting Award winners were announced online Wednesday evening. The ten winners of the $50,000 prize are: Fiction Andrea Lawlor (Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, Knopf) Ling Ma (Severance, Farrar, Straus) Genevieve Sly Crane (Sorority, Scout Press) Nonfiction Jaquira Díaz (Ordinary Girls, Algonquin) Jia Tolentino (Trick Mirror, Random House) Poetry Aria Aber (Hard Damage, University of Nebraska Press) Diannely Antigua (Ugly Music, Yesyes books) Jake Skeets (Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers, Milkweed Editions) Genya Turovskaya (The Breathing Body of This Thought, Black Square Editions) Drama Will Arbery (Heroes of the Fourth Turning, Plano, Evanston Salt […]
Barnes & Noble Education Adopts Poison Pill
In early December Barnes & Noble Education announced they would hire a financial advisor to “review strategic opportunities” — e.g. help try to sell the company — following yet another disappointing quarter, and claiming “a number of unsolicited inquiries” in rescuing the company from the management that has run it down. On Wednesday, with the stock trading at deep lows over the past few 10 days in the wake of broad campus closures, BNED adopted a poison pill (aka “shareholder rights plan”), to make sure no one actually buys the stock thinking they could gain control of the company. BNED said […]