The University of Michigan has taken the logical and appropriate step following the Authors Guild’s swift ability to show that the “due diligence” process for finding potential owners of supposed orphan works before treating those books as available for free distribution was fatally flawed. They said in a statement today, “The close and welcome scrutiny of the list of potential orphan works has revealed a number of errors, some of them serious. This tells us that our pilot process is flawed. “Having learned from our mistakes—we are, after all, an educational institution—we have already begun an examination of our procedures […]
Borders Auctions IP Off to Multiple Bidders, Including Barnes & Noble and Berjaya Books
Borders held an auction for its intellectual property Wednesday and Hilco Streambank, which conducted the proceedings and fielded offers from ten bidders, announced they had sold various assets for nearly $15.8 million. Hilco Streambank was vague on exactly who bought what asset, initially naming only Barnes & Noble and Berjaya Books among the “multiple bidders” who each acquired pieces of Borders’ IP, including a global portfolio of trademarks, the Borders, Waldenbooks and Brentano’s trade names, various domain names, and the Borders.com website. Barnes & Noble paid approximately $13.9 million, but no one has specified yet what they bought.Berjaya Books owns […]
People, Etc.
Joerg Pfuhl “has decided to leave” his position as ceo of Random House Germany (and member of the Random House executive board) at the end of this year. He first joined Bertelsmann in 1994. Company ceo Markus Dohle says Pfuhl told him “he wanted to devote more time to his family and to his interests in education, consulting, and philanthropic work and give them the same undivided focus he has given the company.” The German unit’s chief operating officer since 2005 Frank Sambeth will take over as ceo January 1. Vintage senior editor Jennifer Jackson has been named senior editor, Knopf and Doubleday. […]
Bookselling: New and Expanded Locations for Mysterious Galaxy and Greenlight Bookstore; and More
Updating two stories in progress for months, Mysterious Galaxy‘s new store in Redondo Beach, CA opened to the public earlier this week, in advance of its October 9 grand opening. LAT And the expanded Greenlight Bookstore, which added a second space next door to the current shop in Brooklyn’s Fort Green neighborhood that will house offices, more space for events, and a coffee bar, is now up and running. Brooklyn Paper Another Books-A-Million store is closing in Blacksburg, VA, with the last day for the 16,000 square foot store set for September 27. A separate location in Fayetteville, AR will […]
eNews: iBookstore Quick Reads; Odyl for Facebook Campaigns; BN Partners With Appcelerator; and More
Apple’s iBookstore has joined Kindle Singles in providing a store-within-the-store for short-form digital book content with Quick Reads, a compendium of short stories, longer pieces of journalism and manuals priced between 99 cents and $4.99. MacWorld To help publishers and authors maximize their interaction on Facebook, Odyl is officially rolling out a platform that will help them do so on a much larger scale. Aside from pulling reviews from Goodreads, administering galley giveaways and making book excerpts available to users who “like” Facebook pages, Odyl says its platform “collects rich audience data specific to titles and readers, providing an invaluable […]
People, Etc.
Faber finance director David Tebbutt was killed early Sunday morning and his wife, Judith, was taken hostage by suspected Somali extremist militants at a tourist lodge in the Kiunga marine reserve on the Lamu archipelago off Kenya’s northern coast. Tebbutt and his wife had been on holiday and had only arrived at the resort a few hours before the attack. Tebbutt joined Faber in 2002 and was previously managing director of The Harvill Press and finance director of Routledge. The Bookseller is collecting tributes to Tebbutt from trade colleagues. The Australian At Touchstone, Kaitlyn McCrystal has been promoted to associate […]