Awards
Max Gross‘s novel The Lost Shtetl won the Association of Jewish Libraries Jewish Fiction Award. Nicole Krauss’s To Be a Man and Colum McCann’s Apeirogon were selected as honor books.
Bookselling
A number of large UK retailers, including Waterstones, have yet again called on the government to reduce or remove their business rates (a tax on property used for business). Waterstones ceo James Daunt said in the Sunday Times,”The government’s failure to do anything on business rates is mind-boggling … how long can they go on year after year, wringing their hands and saying, ‘We’re thinking about it’? It’s pathetic.'” Daunt claimed that that Waterstones would close about 80 of its 290 stores when their leases expire if those taxes are not reduced.
Hollywood
On Friday, William Morris Endeavor reached a new franchise agreement with the two Writers Guild of America unions. WME, the last major agency to end its dispute with writers, has agreed to union demands to end packaging and to cap their investment stake in production agencies to 20 percent. “I’ve said repeatedly no one wanted the agency campaign over more than me, and I’m very pleased that we’ve achieved our goal,” David Goodman, the president of the guild’s West Coast branch, told the New York Times, adding that “the agencies who represent us now have their financial interests aligned with their writer clients.”