Becca Putman has joined Harper as senior marketing manager. She was previously with Random House Publishing Group. Jane Kinney-Denning has joined Mango Publishing as acquisitions editor. She was previously executive director of internships and corporate outreach for the master’s in publishing program at Pace University. At Hachette Book Group, Louise Robertson has been promoted to senior director, enterprise transformation. Elizabeth Blue Guess becomes sales director, author brands. Harvard University Press will be sold and distributed in the Indian subcontinent by Harper India. Audio Sourcebooks, one of the larger independent publishers without its own audiobooks line, has paired with Dreamscape Media […]
Audio
People, Etc.
Jesseca Salky has resigned as managing partner and agent at HSG Agency, which she co-founded, to start Salky Literary Management. Launching October 1, the company “will not only sell books into domestic, foreign, audio and dramatic markets in the role of a traditional literary agent but will also act as business manager in the manner of a Hollywood agent.” A memorial to celebrate the life of Grove Atlantic art director Charles Rue Woods will be held on Sunday, October 6 from 4pm-6pm at the Center for Fiction, 15 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn. It is open to the public. Please rsvp to […]
Why Audible’s Legal Arguments Fail
Ahead of the formal response from the seven publishers suing Audible for copyright infringement due to their Caption feature, assistant director at the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property and assistant professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University Devlin Hartline provides a preview of the likely arguments. It’s plainly a copyright case and not a contract dispute, as Audible had argued, because “the publishers only claim infringement of the underlying works, that is, the literary works from which the sound recordings of the audiobooks are derived.” It’s the same as if Audible had produced a […]
Audible Says Publishers Have A Contract Dispute, Not A Copyright Infringement Case
Audible filed their reply to publishers’ request for a preliminary injunction blocking the release of the Captions feature on their work, and the company used the same arguments to file a separate motion to dismiss the case entirely. Of course if Audible actually means what they have been writing to self-published authors and independent publishers — that they “have chosen to wait until the outcome of the proceeding to release” the feature — they could save the court some effort and so stipulate as a legal promise, which would make rendering a verdict on a restraining order unnecessary. That would […]
Legal: More On Captions, and Fox, As EU Is Advised Against Resale of eBooks
Last week when we reported that Audible was telling self-published ACX authors “we have chosen to wait until the outcome of the proceeding to release” their controversial Captions feature, the company said this was “what we’re communicating to authors” and declined to answer our question about whether that policy applied to publishers as well. The Independent Book Publishers Association complained to Audible about Captions on behalf of 27 of their members, and got the exact same form e-mail response back that we quoted last week, Publishing Perspectives reports. Which suggests the entire launch, aside from public domain titles, has been […]
People, Etc.
Wendi Gu has returned to Sanford J. Greenburger Associates as agent; she spent the last two years at Janklow & Nesbit as associate agent. Sarah Phair has joined SJGA as agent after 6 years at Trident Media Group, and Edward Maxwell has been promoted to agent. Jenny Stephens has been promoted to agent at Sterling Lord Literistic. Olivia Russo will join Penguin Children’s as senior director, publicity on September 3. She was formerly publicity director, Harper Children’s. Rebecca Brewer is no longer at Ace/Berkley, and can be reached at rebeccacbr@gmail.com and Brewereditorialservices.com. Phoebe Morgan will rejoin Harper UK as editorial […]