Knopf executive editor Jonathan Segal remembers his colleagues Sonny Mehta and Dan Frank for their “enthusiastic, expansive vision for American literary life” in the Atlantic. And he honors their legacy of focusing on readers to examine the larger moment in publishing: “Readers want the widest possible choice, and the choice is greatest, and the culture richest, when writers have the leeway to initiate a dialogue—an exchange of ideas—in which readers can freely participate.” As he notes, “Condemnation and dismissal lead nowhere, but criticism can be valuable.” More broadly: “Many legitimate and important concerns have surfaced on social media, but Twitter […]
Authors
ABA Apologizes for Sending Paperback of Anti-Trans Book In July White Box
The American Booksellers Association received backlash online after including the paperback edition of Regnery’s Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters in the July White Box mailing, along with a promotional sales sheet. The book has been criticized as transphobic, and is the source of other controversies, including complaints from Amazon employees, two of whom resigned in protest over the company selling it. In a statement posted to Twitter Wednesday afternoon, the ABA wrote “An anti-trans book was included in our July mailing to members. This is a serious, violent incident that goes against ABA’s ends policies, values, and […]
Reese Picks Heller — And Her Company May Get Picked By Buyer
The July pick for Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club is Miranda Cowley Heller’s The Paper Palace (featured in both our Buzz Books 2021: Spring/Summer anthology and our January Buzz Books Editors Panel.) Also making news is Witherspoon’s production company Hello Sunshine, said to be have been approached by “multiple suitors” in recent months, the WSJ reports, including Apple. The company has hired bankers to explore a sale as a result of that interest, and those bankers (aka “people close to the situation”) suggest to the paper that “the company could be valued at as much $1 billion in a deal.” Apparently the […]
Simon & Schuster Wins Libel Case, But Supreme Court Minority Wants to Overturn “Actual Malice” Standard
The Supreme Court let stand a verdict in favor of publisher Simon & Schuster and author Guy Lawson’s Arms and the Dudes: How Three Stoners from Miami Beach Became the Most Unlikely Gunrunners in History (the basis of the movie War Dogs). Albanian Shkelzen Berisha had sued for defamation, but lower courts found he was a public figure with respect to stories about Albanian weapons-trafficking, and did not meet the high bar of showing that the author acted with “actual malice” in any alleged errors. That is the standard set in the significant 1964 Supreme Court decision, New York Times […]
Controveries: Cohen’s Book Has New Publisher, Title
Richard Cohen’s work of history, cancelled in May by Random House due to “the publisher’s sensitivities” over how he represented the roles of Black people and African Americans, has a new publisher — along with a new title. Simon & Schuster will publish the book, retitled Making History, in May 2022, and Weidenfeld & Nicolson has rescheduled their edition as well. Cohen tells the Guardian the added material “has improved the book” and says of the new title, “I actually think it’s better than The History Makers.” The title change came after a cease and desist letter from Julieanna Richardson, […]
What’s In A Name?….
Simon & Schuster ceo Jonathan Karp said in his latest Word According to Karp video that John Bolton had a different title in mind for his book last summer: “The original title of the book, Ambassador Bolton wanted to call it A Hard Pounding, which was actually a quote from the Duke of Wellington after the Battle of Waterloo.” (Our copy-editing department notes the remark was made during the battle, while the Duke’s troops awaited the arrival of their Prussian allies, hence the full quote, “Hard pounding this, gentlemen, but we will see who can pound the longest.”) Karp adds, […]