Julian Assange issued a lengthy statement via WikiLeaks last night, saying that Canongate’s publication Thursday of the early draft of his book over his objections is “old-fashioned opportunism and duplicity — screwing people over to make a buck.” He says the house is “profiteering from an unfinished and erroneous draft.” Assange says the manuscript that became the basis of publication–which Canongate has acknowledged was a first draft–is rather “a narrative and literary interpretation of a conversation between the writer [Andrew O’Hagan] and me.” Assange says it was never submitted to the house at all; instead, he says O’Hagan’s researcher provided […]
Authors
Canongate Will Publish Assange Memoir Against His Wishes, While Knopf Cancels
The man who made countless national secrets transparent without permission now faces a bit of turnabout, as Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s memoir is set to be published tomorrow, over the author’s apparent objection. Canongate will release the book in the UK, but will present it as “an unauthorized biography” since by their own account the author wanted to cancel the contract. Canongate says Assange “had already signed his advance over to his lawyers to settle his legal bills” and did not pay them back, so the house “decided to honour that contract and to publish. Once the advance has been […]
The Posthumous Files: James Cain, Reynolds Price, and Gerald Schoenfeld
In the ample flow of deal news, this week’s reports include a trio of posthumous publications: Hard Case Crime will publish James M. Cain‘s THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS, a previously unpublished manuscript that he was still working on upon his death in 1977. Founder and editor Charles Ardai told the NYT he was tipped off to the manuscript’s existence by Max Allan Collins, but it took him five years to obtain a copy and several years more to convince Cain’s estate to let him publish the book, which will appear as a hardcover in fall 2012. NYT Scribner will publish a […]
People, Etc.:
At this morning’s BISG annual meeting, the organization confirmed that vice chair Ken Michaels is now serving as co-chair of the organization’s board, alongside Dominique Raccah, who will step down from her position in a year. (Raccah took over as sole chair of the board last November when co-chair Andrew Weber left Random House.) Little, Brown, John Parsley has been promoted to executive editor. He joined the company in the fall of 2007. David Moldawer has joined Amazon Publishing as senior editor for the New York-based trade group, run by Larry Kirshbaum. Previously he was a senior editor at McGraw-Hill. At […]
Sourcebooks Establishes New Education Division, and More
Fast-growing Sourcebooks is launching a new education division that will incorporate and extend existing publications and programs for college students and the college-bound with a number of new initiatives. Initial staffing for the division will include six new positions in sales, marketing and information systems, continuing to draw on existing staff in editorial and publicity. The first new hires are: Technical architect Deb Kimminau, responsible for leading the design and development of new digital initiatives, which include MyMaxScore; programmer analyst Kavita Khanna, responsible for updating and implementing new technical requirements for the MyMaxScore adaptive learning software; and education sales manager […]
Authors Organizations File Fresh Lawsuit Challenging Google Library Scans and Pending “Orphan Works” Access
The Authors Guild filed a fresh lawsuit yesterday in a New York Federal Court that stems from the Google Books library scanning project. In this case, they are suing the university consortium HathiTrust, as well as the regents and trustees of the University of Michigan, the University of California, the University of Wisconsin, Indiana University and Cornell. The Guild is joined by the Australian Society of Authors, UNEQ (a Quebec writers union), seven authors who are on the boards of those organizations, and author Fay Weldon. Like all the legal wrangling over the Google scanning, the case is complicated, and […]