The AP looks at the rising popularity of the holiday picture book ELF ON THE SHELF, which has sold 2.5 million copies since its 2005 publication by CCA & B Publishers, the Marietta, GA-based publishing houses founded by ELF creators Carol Aebersold and her daughters Chanda Bell and Christa Pitts after a round of publisher rejections. CCA&B recorded $10 million in revenue in 2010 and now employs 25 people. “We used to have to stop people in the aisles at retail shows and explain what this was,” Pitts explained but now, “people are coming in and they already know. It’s […]
Authors
Authors: WIMPY KID’s Kinney Sues For Trademark Infringement; BN Ships Green’s FAULT OF OUR STARS Early
Author of the DIARY OF A WIMPY KID series Jeff Kinney filed a lawsuit Tuesday in a Boston federal court alleging that DIARY OF A ZOMBIE KID, published by Antarctic Press, “blatantly infringed [Kinney’s] intellectual property and diluted its trademarks.” (Kinney and his company trademarked the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” title and the name and look of the books’ main character with the US Patent & Trademark Office under “publications, namely a series of children’s books” in Class 16 and, “Board games; card games; plush toys; toy action figures; puzzles” in Class 28, respectively.) In addition to the “confusingly […]
eNews: Chabon Criticizes Standard eBook Royalty As Open Road Publishes His Backlist; New Cookbook Apps;and More
Open Road Integrated Media will publish five backlist titles by Michael Chabon starting today, including novels THE MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH and THE WONDER BOYS. In an interview with the AP Chabon called the 50 percent royalty Open Road offered for the books “fair and generous” while took issue with industry standard (which the AP said was “around 25 percent” but which we take to mean 25 percent of net proceeds) for ebook royalties as offered by current publisher HarperCollins and past publisher Random House, which will publish the ebook edition of THE ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY next June. “I […]
Author News: Stockett, Ailes, Mina
Author of The Help Kathryn Stockett reports to CBS’s The Early Show on her new novel-in-progress. Originally due at the beginning of 2011, Stockett says “It’s not ready! But I’m working on it.” The new book “takes place during the Roaring ’20s in Oxford, Mississippi. … It’s about a group of women who have absolutely no marketable skills. We, as women of the 2000s, we go to college and prepare ourselves for the world. But these women did not, and the men fall away, so they have to find a different way to earn a living.” CBS Fox News head […]
Darcie Chan, Recluse No More
Last week the NYTBR featured Darcie Chan, author of the self-published success The Mill River Recluse, in the Inside the List column, where she noted “I would still love to have a book traditionally published, be it Recluse, my second novel (currently in progress) or a future work.” Now the WSJ has a long feature on her path to success, and continuing discussions with publishers via agent Laurie Liss at Sterling Lord Literistic. Unfortunately the article suffers from some NYT-esque pejoratives and errors of fact, so the account of publisher discussions is open to some interpretation. “A few major publishers” […]
People, Etc.
Penguin USA ceo David Shanks is PW’s “person of the year,” cited “for his leadership role in building a solid foundation for his company while making the necessary investments and changes to build for the future.” Rochelle Bourgault joins Shambhala Publications this month, working mainly on their new Roost Books imprint. She will report to Sara Bercholz and work closely with Roost editor Jennifer Urban-Brown. Bourgault was formerly an editor at Quarry Books. Amanda Knox’s co-defendant (and former boyfriend) Raffaele Sollecito, exonerated of murder charges and released from prison at the same time as Knox last month, has signed with […]