Curiosity Quills Press co-owner Eugene Teplitsky has confirmed to PL that the publisher is behind on authors’ royalty payments and temporarily shutting down print operations with the exception of middle grade novels, citing “month after month” of dwindling sales as the cause. All authors now have the option to terminate their contracts, “no strings attached” (including the waiving of their contractual “termination fees”), Teplitsky wrote in an email. Authors who wish to terminate should “simply email us at editor@curiosityquills.com and we will revert rights to all who ask for it, no questions asked,” he wrote. He is also giving authors the ability to […]
Vivendi Gets Greenlight to Acquire Editis
The French government’s competition authority has approved Vivendi’s acquisition of Editis, the second-largest book publisher in France after Hachette Livre, finding that the transaction “was not likely to undermine competition in the markets for cultural property.” The Authority “took into account the respective market shares of the parties, the organization of the relevant markets, the competitive pressure exerted by the competitors and the counter-power of certain customers, in particular in the digital sector” and dismissed “any competition problem.” The €900 million deal was formalized in mid-November after several months of negotiations, and is now expected to close right away. Owned by […]
Parneros Formally Disputes BN’s Claim He Was a “Faithless Servant”
Former Barnes & Noble CEO Demos Parneros’ determination to dispute the bookseller’s claim he was a “faithless servant” has now resulted in a formal motion: On December 21, after some scheduling confusion regarding an intended postponement, his counsel filed the motion to dismiss BN’s second counterclaim against him. (As for the other two counterclaims, counsel heeded Judge John Koetl’s strongly-established concerns about a motion to dismiss.) Attorney Anne Clark’s 15-page filing leverages legal precedent to dispute BN’s claim that Parneros was a “faithless servant” who sabotaged negotiations with a potential buyer of the struggling company. While Parneros disputes the facts in BN’s […]
Thousands of Books Set to Enter the Public Domain on January 1
Santa has one more delivery on the way: On January 1, 2019, all works published in the United States in 1923 will enter the public domain. The list of books, movies, and songs numbers more than 1000, based on research conducted by Duke Law School’s Center for the Public Domain — and includes work by authors such as Robert Frost, Aldous Huxley, and Edith Wharton. This is the first mass-release of works into the public’s hands in 21 years, thanks to a provision of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act that froze the release of works created prior to […]
Scholastic Q2 Results Flat, with Continued Trade Growth
Scholastic reported Q2 results for the period ending November 30, 2018, again showing strong results in children’s trade books, which is a modest part of their overall sales, which were up slightly overall. Second quarter revenue was $604.7 million, an increase of 1 percent compared to $598.3 million in the second quarter of 2018 – despite a negative affect from the new ASC 606 revenue recognition guidelines. The new accounting rules lowered revenues by $10.8 million in the quarter, whereas in the first quarter the rules changes had added $9.3 million to sales. Adjusted EBITDA was $123.2 million for the […]
Penguin Random House US CEO Talks Author Earnings at NYPL
The New York Public Library and the Authors Guild co-hosted a panel discussion as part of their “Who Owns the Word?” series on December 10, moderated by novelist and Authors Guild vp Richard Russo. Authors Kurt Andersen, Alexander Chee, and TJ Stiles, along with Madeline McIntosh, the CEO of Penguin Random House US, joined Russo onstage. Much of the conversation focused on the continuing importance of physical stores to book discovery, narrowing in on online buying as a major contributor to the challenging environment faced by emerging novelists today, and by fiction authors more broadly. McIntosh kicked off that part of […]