The parties in the A3 trial have been revising and resubmitting some of their key documents to more lightly redact data and citations. We already swapped in Penguin Random House’s newer version of their pre-trial brief on Monday, and now that post also includes a posted PDF of the Department of Justice’s revised brief as well (submitted to the court yesterday). Among the details now visible: When bidding for Simon & Schuster, Bertelsmann ceo Thomas Rabe expressed that the company faced “a disadvantage in the auction due to antitrust risks, which are likely to be greater in our case than […]
Archives for July 2022
Obituary: Robert Scudellari
Robert (Bob) Scudellari, 88, who was corporate art director at Random House in the 70s and 80s, died on June 3. Scudellari designed books jackets for John Cheever, Toni Morrison, Robert Caro, John le Carré, Anne Rice, and many more, as well as creating the overall design for Random House Modern Library and the black-jacket Library of America line. Erroll McDonald of Knopf said, “He was a lovely and hugely talented man renowned for his signature jacket designs, his enduring typographic branding of authors.”
“What’s Next?”: Avid Reader Press Diversity Committee Panel
Wednesday evening, the Avid Reader Press Diversity Committee hosted a panel for junior employees and people hoping to break into the industry. The committee was founded in 2020 in the wake of the George Floyd protests, “to better understand and reckon with the lack of diversity and equity in publishing.” Avid Reader assistant editor Amy Guay moderated the panel, which was made up of professionals who have been in the business a while, and could speak to what has helped them grow and made them stay. Alia Almeida (telesales representative at HarperCollins), Shida Carr (deputy director of publicity at Atria), […]
Center For Fiction First Novel Prize Longlist
The Center for Fiction announced the 24-title longlist for its First Novel Prize, with the winner to be announced on December 6.
Expanding Deals
As some of you may have noticed, we are finishing up another expansion and revision of Deals/Dealmakers categories, this time with an emphasis on our sprawling nonfiction section. Long overdue (someone finally asked), we have created a Body, Mind & Spirit category, so those projects will no longer be scattered among multiple ill-fitting tags. We have also split the rather unwieldy History/Politics/Current Affairs into two separate groups: History, on its own, and Politics/Current Affairs (which still holds a wide spectrum of topics, including climate, race, feminism, gender, legal & justice, urban studies, education and more, often broadly related to social […]
Silvers Grant Winners
Fifteen writers will receive the 2022 Silvers Grants for Work in Progress.