At a presentation on Wednesday, HBO Max, which is rebranding as just Max in conjunction with Warner Bros. Discovery, announced a new live action Harry Potter TV series. J.K. Rowling will executive produce, along with Neil Blair and Ruth Kenley-Letts, but a writer and showrunner have not yet been selected. Also, “David Heyman is currently in talks to executive produce.” The Hollywood Reporter notes that the series will have a budget “commensurate with those of Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon” (the former’s first season had a budget of $125 million). “The stories from each of Rowling’s Harry Potter books […]
Archives for April 2023
NYPL Announces 2023 Cullman Center Fellows
The NYPL announced the 2023 Cullman Center fellows, including fiction writers Caoilinn Hughes, Amitava Kumar, and Catherine Lacey; nonfiction writers Jessica Bruder, Molly Crabapple, Lance Richardson, and Brenda Wineapple; poet Nicole Sealey; and translator Yasmine Seale. The NYPL selects “people whose work will benefit directly from access to the collections at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building.” The fellows receive a stipend and an office at the midtown building, as well as access to the library’s research collections.
Obituary: Rick Wolff
Rick Wolff, who edited bestselling books including Rich Dad Poor Dad and co-authored 18 books of his own, died on April 10 of brain cancer. Wolff was also the host of weekly radio show The Sports Edge, on WFAN in New York City. His family writes in a remembrance, “To know Rick or Dad or Pops was to love him. He was wise, thoughtful, sharp, funny, incredibly smart, and truly just a wonderful person. In his honor, please remember to never give up on your dreams. He never did, even after so many of them had come true.”
Bookshop.org Has Raised $2.3M to Launch Ebook Sales
A Wired profile of Bookshop.org founder Andy Hunter details the past and future of the company, most notably explaining that Hunter has raised $2.3 million to fund the company’s initiative to sell ebooks. (Participating bookstores will make 30 percent of the cover price for each book sold.) In January, the ABA — which is a Bookshop investor — voted to invest $200,000 in the ebook rollout, and the project’s main investor is William Randolph Hearst III, who was a principal investor when Bookshop launched. The article acknowledges the challenges involved in the initiative, since many alternative app-based reading platforms have tried […]
People 4/12
VP, executive editor Lucia Macro will retire from William Morrow/Avon on June 23.
HBG Increased BIPOC Staff in 2022, Though Leadership Diversity Fell
Hachette Book Group released their fourth annual update on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, with data from 2022. In 2022, 36.4 percent of the company’s workforce was made up of BIPOC employees, an increase in representation in “nearly every publishing group and non-publishing division.” Within that, 4.2 percent of staff are Black, 21.4 percent are Hispanic/Latinx, 7.4 percent are Asian, and 3.1 percent are two or more races. Among new hires, 61 percent identify as BIPOC, up from 54 percent in 2021. Diversity at the VP level was stagnant at 17.9 percent, and declined at the director level to 21.6 […]