Agents and business partners Dean Cooke and Sally Harding are creating a new company, the Cooke Agency International, to sell rights for Canadian publishers and agencies. Sub rights director Suzanne Brandreth will oversee daily operations from a new office, with Cooke and Harding working for both the new company and their existing Cooke Agency. Random House Canada will use the new operation to sell “the majority of our subsidiary rights,” including foreign rights, permissions, and domestic book club sales. Random House Canada ceo Brad Martin says “the reality of our business is that we can no longer financially justify maintaining […]
Agency News
Florida Attorney General Sues Writer's Literary Agency and Robert Fletcher
The state’s crimes division “received more than 175 complaints from around the world claiming Fletcher and his associates, who claimed to act as literary agents and publishers, allegedly collected money from victims anxious to see their work published.” The lawsuit seeks injunctive relief as well as full restitution. According to the suit, “few books were ever sold as a result of the efforts of Fletcher’s companies.” He “used more than 20 websites and related companies to collect funds from potential authors, but misled victims about fees, costs, and promised results.” The filing asserts that “usually each prospective author was good […]
NYT On eBook Release Timing–Ditto
The NYT follows-up the WSJ piece on Sourcebooks’ decision to postpone the ebook release of their new hardcover YA novel Bran Hambric. As we noted in our write-up on Monday, the Times reiterates that every house with a major frontlist fiction release is debating whether to delay publication in ebook form (and some are contemplating much broader shifts in the timing of their ebook releases). Since no one is talking about it on the record, the Times story doesn’t add much that you don’t already know. Interesting, in a quirky way, is this paragraph: “For now, Amazon is taking a […]
People
Riccardo Cavellero is leaving Random House’s Spanish-language joint venture Random House Mondadori after eights years as ceo at the end of this year. Next January he will become general manager of Mondadori’s trade-book business worldwide, based in Milan. Markus Dohle and Mondadori ceo Maurizio Costa write that “we are committed to appointing a new ceo who will build upon our strengths as print-book publishers and also will lead us to become the No. 1 Spanish-language digital-book publisher. Kate Travers has joined powerHouse Books as marketing director. Most recently she was strategic marketing director at the Literary Ventures Fund and marketing […]
People: Weisbach Gets Three New Associates
Rob Weisbach Creative Management announced a relationship with three new senior associates, Erin Cox, David Groff, and Jake Bauman, who are becoming part of the company’s “virtual team.” (They work collaboratively–“operating independently but in collaboration”–though not from the same physical office space.) Cox will represent authors, offer publicity expertise, and provide publicity and promotion services for outside clients, and work with corporate clients including Conde Nast Digital and the Frankfurt Book Fair. She was most recently book publishing director at the New Yorker. Independent editor Groff will develop a client list and provide editorial guidance, while offering editorial services to […]
Freese to Take Over At NBN; Tamblyn Leaves BookNet for Shortcovers
Rich Freese will take over from Jed Lyons as president of NBN as of July 6, working out of Oakland, CA. Lyons will “focus on the book publishing activities of NBN’s parent company, The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group.” (The release says NBN had sales of $100 million, and R&L had sales of $60 million.) Most recently Freese had launched a new distribution enterprise for BookMasters, though he worked at NBN in the late 90s and through 2002. Lyons says in the announcement “Rich Freese is the most knowledgeable, thoughtful, and creative person I know in the book distribution business.” […]