Lisa Bankoff has left ICM and established her own agency, Bankoff Collaborative. She says of the move: “I grew up at ICM and had the privilege of daily working alongside some of the brightest minds in this–or any–business. What I look forward to now is the wherewithal to operate outside of a corporate culture and do an even better job of serving the interests of the many clients who have moved with me.” Knopf editor George Andreou will take over as director of the Harvard University Press in September, following the recent retirement of William P. Sisler. Andreou joined Knopf in 1990, and co-founded […]
Authors
The Kenyon-Clare Legal Dispute Continues, with Trial Date for 2018
The Bookseller has an update on the long-running legal dispute between Sherrilyn Kenyon and Cassandra Clare, first filed by Kenyon in early 2016, though it seems to come from Clare’s attorney Jon Cahill. What Cahill focuses on is their motion filed Tuesday, pressing Kenyon to produce “evidence of her claims.” He argues that responses provided by Kenyon in May “remain deficient, because…they are little more than a rehash of the allegations in the Amended Complaint.” What the docket also shows, however, is that earlier this week Chief District Court Judge Waverly Crenshaw set a jury trial date of September 11, […]
Briefs: Swedish Chain Sold, Milo’s Pre-Orders, and More
Sweden’s largest bookseller Akademibokhandeln has been sold to industrial group Volati, which purchased control from Accent Equity (along with acquiring minority stakes from a group of companies, including publisher Natur & Kultur). With 108 stores, Akademibokhandeln is said to comprise 35 percent of Sweden’s book sales. The group had sales last year of approximately $208 million, with ebitda of over $14 million. Though the purchase price was not disclosed, the press release says the chain has an enterprise of about 760 million Swedish krona, or about $88 million. BookNet Canada released their annual survey on the state of digital publishing […]
Clinton and Patterson Co-Author A Novel, For Joint Publication By Little, Brown and Knopf
Knopf and Little, Brown announced jointly on Monday that they will co-publish a novel co-authored by former president Bill Clinton and James Patterson, THE PRESIDENT IS MISSING, on June 11, 2018 (six days before Father’s Day). Century will publish in the UK and Commonwealth, excluding Canada, and Suzanne Smith at Knopf will oversee the sale of translation rights. (Presumably Random House has the lead on publishing in Germany and Hachette has a similar lead on publishing in France; it will be interesting to see how they handle Spanish-language rights, where both companies have major groups.) Clinton and Patterson were represented by […]
Milo to Self Publish; Taunts Simon & Schuster and Threatens Lawsuit
A little more than two months after exiting the stage following the surfacing of recorded remarks in which he appeared to approve of men having sex with underage boys, Milo Yiannopoulos is back. In late April he said that he had raised $12 million and intended to launch “a fully tooled-up talent factory and management company dedicated to the destruction of political correctness and the progressive left.” Those efforts began May 5 with a livestreamed online announcement, which opened with this plan: “I am going to spend the next year making the name Simon & Schuster synonymous with censorship.” He added, “I am […]
Briefs: Prizes for Johnson and Shepard, Tor Labs, Opening Magic, and More
The inaugural winner of the $50,000 Simpson Family Literary Prize — honoring “a writer who has earned a distinguished reputation and the approbation and gratitude of readers” — is T. Geronimo Johnson, “at the relatively middle stage of a burgeoning career.” Author most recently of The World to Come: Stories Jim Shepard won the 2016 Rea Award for the Short Story, cited for his “prodigious research” into history and science and “X-ray vision of the soul.” The National Book Foundation gave their Innovations In Reading prize to Barbershop Books, a community-based literacy program that creates child-friendly reading spaces in barbershops, founded in 2013 by Alvin […]