After bringing peace to the Middle East and curing Covid-19, Jared Kushner will write “the definitive, thorough recounting of the [Trump] administration and the truth about what happened behind closed doors” for Harper imprint Broadside Books. They call him “the most consequential adviser throughout President Trump’s presidency” who “played a central role in the administration’s most significant accomplishments.” The book will be published early next year. The NYT reported that former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos “has also sold a book” — but they don’t know to whom. Among the other not-at-all silenced members of the previous administration, Kayleigh McEnany’s For […]
Harper Has Been “Very Aggressive” In Buying New Titles As Market Continues to Grow
HarperCollins ceo Brian Murray was interviewed Tuesday morning as part of a Credit Suisse investor conference, where he explained the trade publishing business’s growing sales and margins. Murray made clear, “We are being aggressive in terms of buying books. We’ve seen the book pie grow, maybe 15 percent. And so our response, which is part opportunistic and part defensive, is to be aggressive in buying right now. Because if that pie remains large, we want to make sure that we get a nice share of the larger pie. And if it happens to wane a little bit, we want to […]
Legal
A lawsuit in the UK has revealed that Neil Blair at The Blair Partnership paid his former employer Christopher Little £10 million as a settlement fee in January 2012. The payment came after Blair set up his own agency in 2011 and took over representation of JK Rowling. The filing also indicates that Blair borrowed the money for the lump sum payment from Rowling. The only previous report of the settlement was a Daily Mail account in February 2012, with a statement from statement from reputation and crisis-management firm Project Associates indicating that Rowling and Little “have reached an amicable agreement […]
Frankfurt Touts Plans, But…
Last week the traditional trade press ran credulous accounts of a persuasion campaign from the Frankfurt Book Fair, touting modest — fully cancelable — plans from primarily German and European exhibitors as a sign that, “Everyone is quite positive about the fair taking place in the autumn and we expect a lot of last-minute bookings.” Maybe not everyone? For many in our core audience, gathering together people from around the world to share the same indoor air face-to-face for three days — with no Covid test or vaccine requirement, and the added downside of the German public attending on Friday […]
House Judiciary Introduces Bills that Would Break Up Amazon’s Vertical Publishing Monopoly
Following on their 16-month investigation into the digital marketplace and the “unregulated power wielded by Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google,” the House Judiciary committee introduced five bills that would break up and significant restrict and constrain those tech giants. Each bill is has a Republican co-sponsor and the committee refers to the package as “bipartisan bills drafted by lawmakers on the Antitrust Subcommittee,” but that still doesn’t tell us where the Senate stands. Two bills in particular would bring significant relief to Amazon’s broad dominance of book publishing. The most dramatic bill, which applies only to companies that worth $600 […]
Bookselling
Once again, Barnes & Noble is replacing a lost location with a much smaller nearby store. In Ulster, NY, where the chain closed a 24,636-square-foot space in April, they have been given a permit for a new 7,656-square-foot space in the same area.