A decade after the ambitious Connecticut Attorney General (now US senator Richard Blumenthal) joined the ambitious Texas Attorney General (now Texas governor Greg Abbott) in helping to provide Amazon with a government-enhanced strangehold on the ebook market, a new Connecticut AG has been investigating Amazon for a while. The office of AG William Tong “has an active and ongoing antitrust investigation into Amazon regarding potentially anticompetitive terms” in its contract with major publishers. Tong’s statement said, “Our office continues to aggressively monitor this market to protect fair competition for consumers, authors, and other e-book retailers.” In the past, this office […]
Archives for January 2021
People, Etc.
David Drake has been promoted to president of Crown, and Gillian Blake moves up to publisher. Kara Welsh is promoted to president of a newly-renamed Ballantine Books, which comprises Ballantine, Bantam, Dell, and Delacorte imprints, and Jennifer Hershey moves up to publisher of Ballantine. Chris Jackson is promoted to executive vice president, publisher, One World and RocLit 101. Also within the Random House Publishing Group, Scott Shannon, executive vice president, publisher of Del Rey, will expand his role to also become director, strategy. Tricia Narwani is now editor-in-chief at Del Rey, and Keith Clayton moves up to vp and publishing director, licensed […]
People: Richman to Co-Lead Media Rights at UTA, Trimmer to Head MTV Books Relaunch
UTA has promoted book-to-film agent Jason Richman to co-lead its Media Rights Group, alongside Keya Khayatian. Richman has been at UTA since 2010. The agency says that the department has closed over 250 deals in the past year, licensing literary properties for film and TV. Separately, Christian Trimmer will lead a relaunch of MTV Books. Trimmer will report to MTV Entertainment president of content and chief content officer Nina Diaz. The imprint will publish in partnership with Simon & Schuster, housed within the branded publishing group of Simon & Schuster Children’s, with director of branded publishing Kara Sargent as the […]
Publishers Are Holding or Bifurcating Foundry Payments
Following our story from last week on authors receiving bad checks from Foundry Literary + Media for payments due — along with advocacy from the Authors Guild — we have learned that multiple large publishers have moved quickly to protect authors’ funds. The Penguin Random House royalty department told a representative of Foundry in an email shown to PL that they “have had several authors request bifurcated payments” and would be granting those requests. (When bifurcating payments, the publisher pays directly to the author their share — usually 85 percent — and pays the agency commission only directly to the […]
People, Etc.
Ian Hudson has joined Bloomsbury as managing director of the consumer publishing division and executive director on the Bloomsbury executive committee. He was most recently ceo of DK, and stepped down last March “to recharge his batteries before embarking on the next stage of his career.” Hudson fills the position vacated by longtime Bloomsbury executive Emma Hopkin, currently managing director of Bloomsbury Consumer Publishing, will left the company at the end of 2020 “following an assessment of the future business needs of the consumer division.” Jayme Boucher joins Hachette Book Group on January 20 as director of their speakers bureau. Established […]
New Books Publishing January 12
A broad selection of books publish today, including Victoria Gosling’s Before the Ruins, featured in our Buzz Books Fall/Winter 2020 sampler; a masterclass on Russian short stories from George Saunders; Adam Jentleson’s all too timely Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy; and more. 26 new works of fiction https://bookshop.org/lists/new-fiction-publishing-january-12 https://shop.aer.io/publishers_lunch/cl/New_Nonfiction_Publishing_January_/218607 15 new nonfiction titles https://bookshop.org/lists/new-nonfiction-publishing-january-12 https://shop.aer.io/publishers_lunch/cl/New_Nonfiction_Publishing_January_/218607