• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Login
  • Register

Publishers Lunch

The Publishing Industry's Daily Essential Read

  • Publishers Marketplace
  • Site Guide
  • Help

People, Etc.

April 24, 2020
By Erin Somers

Mirabelle Korn has been promoted to editor at Chronicle Books.

Claire Fallon has been promoted to publicity and operations associate at Coffee House Press, and Enrique Olivarez has joined the company as development director.

Bookselling
Bay Books in Coronado, CA has reopened in their new space, after the original location nearby was closed at the end of 2019. For now, the store accepts pickup orders from 10 AM to 2 PM and is providing free delivery within Coronado.

Relief
Stephen King and John Grisham will hold a free online conversation discussing their new books on Wednesday, April 29 at 7:00 PM Eastern. “In lieu of admission, the authors hope attendees will consider donating to the Bookseller Industry Charitable Foundation: https://secure.donationpay.org/bincfoundation/. You can register at grishamking.eventbrite.com or watch on Stephen King’s YouTube Channel. Questions for the authors can go use #AskKingandGrisham

Starting Monday, April 27, fans can listen to a free podcast version of Rachel Renee Russel’s first Dork Diaries book. Produced in partnership with Simon & Schuster Audio, the multi-voiced production complete with music and sound effects will unfold in 15 episodes, every Monday and Friday. S&S Audio president Chris Lynch says in the release, “Many parents are stuck at home looking for a new way to entertain their children. By taking the unprecedented step of adapting such an enormous bestseller and offering it free as podcast, we are giving families something that they can enjoy together, screen free.”

The International Publishers Association wrote an open letter to the governments of the world asking them for support. “In many countries, our industry is already struggling for oxygen,” they wrote. “We must find ways to ensure the future for authors, publishers, editors, designers, distributors, booksellers and those who work in collective management, so that the book industry can bounce back once this pandemic is conquered.”

Bad Books
Kobo ceo Michael Tamblyn asked the people submitting ebooks about fake COVID-19 cures through their self-publishing platform to, “Just. &%$*@. Stop.” He reports they are rejecting “over 50 percent of the ebooks submitted dealing with” the virus. “They are filled with near-criminal snake-oil quackery, conspiracy theories, and raw disinformation.” And that was before the ones about disinfectant and UV light.

Also: “PS – To the other people who are cut-and-pasting free material from the #WHO website, sticking a cover on it and trying to charge for it: less bad, but so lame.”

Plus
The anonymous bookseller and indie press employee who created the @PublishrsWeakly Twitter account corresponded with Electric Lit (which unfortunately mistyped the address throughout the piece as @PublishersWeakly): “The account started as a way to send up Publisher’s Weekly’s #BooksAreEssential campaign. One of us is a currently out-of-work bookseller, and using the language of the COVID-19 era, saying that books are an essential service, seems to imply that the industry is willing to put people’s bodies on the line to sell a $14 paperback, and there’s no universe in which that is in any way justifiable.” Then “it quickly became about critiquing the industry as a whole.”

Filed Under: Bookstores, Free, Personnel

sidebar

Primary Free Sidebar

Login


Forgot password
Quick Pass users click here to log in
Get Full Access
The publishing industry's essential daily read

Each Publishers Lunch Deluxe subscription includes full access to our searchable multi-year archive of industry news, a nightly email reporting 10 to 50 deal transactions, and our database of industry contacts, scripts, and posting privileges.

Learn More

RSS Automat

  • Leigh Bardugo Signs with WME for Film/TV Representation March 29, 2023 Variety
  • Solid State Books Workers Announce Plans to Unionize March 28, 2023 Union website
  • Following Sale, America's Test Kitchen Lays Off 23 Employees, Including All of ATK Kids Staff March 28, 2023 Union instagram post
  • Acquire and Fire: Hachette UK In Consultations to Eliminate About Half the Staff of Welbeck March 28, 2023 Bookseller
  • Jefferson, de Kretser Win Folio Prizes March 27, 2023 Prize announcement
  • Harper UK Edits Agatha Christie Novels to Remove "Offensive" Language March 27, 2023 The Guardian
  • NYU Launches Five-Day "Advanced Publishing Institute" Program for January 2024 March 25, 2023 NYU site
  • Hachette UK to Publish "Spare Us!" Parody on April 6 March 23, 2023 Publisher site
  • Netflix to Stream Series Based on Ramit Sethi's Book, "How to Get Rich" March 23, 2023 THR
  • James Patterson Signs First-Look Development Deal with Skydance Television March 22, 2023 Deadline
© 2023 Publishers Lunch. All Rights Reserved.