Washington district court Judge Marsha J. Pechman granted a temporary restraining order against the ebook piracy site KISS Library, as requested in the suit by Authors Guild members, Amazon Publishing, and PRH. The order freezes the assets and websites. Though the enterprise is based in Ukraine, the order applies to “any funds with their payment processors” attorney John Goldmark told PL. Their main payment processor, FastSpring, is based in California, and some of the domain registrars are also US based, he said. As of at least yesterday, all the domains had already been taken down, though KISS could migrate its […]
Archives for July 2020
People, Etc.
Stephanie Cabot has joined Susanna Lea Associates, working primarily from the New York office. She has been at The Gernert Company since 2005, and is a French-American dual national. Jenny Chen has been promoted to editor at Crooked Lane Books and Alcove Press, where she will acquire crime and book club fiction. Publisher for art and architecture at Yale University Press Patricia Fidler will take on the new role of executive director of the press’s Art & Architecture ePortal as of September 1. Meagan Levinson has been promoted to executive editor, sociology and head of paperback publishing at Princeton University […]
People, Etc.: Nan Talese to Retire
Nan A. Talese, president, publisher & editorial director of her own imprint at Doubleday, announced she will retire at the end of the year after six decades in publishing. She joined Random House in 1959 as a copyeditor and went on to work at Simon & Schuster and Houghton Mifflin, founding the Nan A. Talese imprint in 1990. The release notes, “Nan’s grace, brilliance, and steel will (she has been given the nickname ‘the Velvet Hammer’) have endeared her to her writers, her coworkers, and the bookselling industry at large. The impact Nan has had on the literary landscape is […]
Authors Guild Members, Amazon and PRH Join to Fight Ukrainian Ebook Pirates
A group of Authors Guild members, Amazon Publishing, and Penguin Random House jointly filed a lawsuit in a Washington state federal court against Ukraine-based Kiss Library, alleging that the site flagrantly trades in cheap pirated ebooks. Kiss “is able to offer ‘unbeatable prices’ for a simple reason: its catalogs are replete with pirated ebooks, including titles for which Plaintiffs individually own and/or control exclusive copyrights in theUnited States,” says the complaint. Kiss Library does business under Kissly.net, Libly.net, Cheap-Library.com and other domain names. (Currently, the three named URLs are down.) Author plaintiffs include Lee Child, Sylvia Day, John Grisham, C.J. […]
McGraw Hill Informs Authors Their Audible Relationship Is Likely Over
Authors who published audiobooks with McGraw Hill received an email from the publisher in late June notifying them that their audiobooks would be pulled from Audible on June 30. “After prolonged contract negotiations with Audible over a span of several years, we have been unable to come to terms for the renewal of our agreement,” said the June 24 letter. It continued, “There is the possibility of our reaching some acceptable agreement in the coming weeks but we are not hopeful…. The current terms with Audible are from several years ago, agreed to at a time when audio was not […]
People, Etc.
Dawn Durante will join University of Texas Press as editor in chief on August 10. She was previously senior acquisitions editor at University of Illinois Press. Catherine Zappa has been promoted to publisher and evp of film & television at Dreamscape Media. Rachel Spence has joined The Rights Factory as associate editor. She was previously acquisitions editor at Dundurn Press. Picks Barnes & Noble chose Rachel Beanland‘s Florence Adler Swims Forever as its July book club selection. Book Fairs As expected, Canada will not participate in this year’s actual Frankfurt Book Fair as the featured/paid “guest of honor.” They will […]