Laments over the contractual terms offered by Random House’s digital-only imprint Hydra escalated to Boing Boing, naturally, as Random House digital publishing director Allison Dobson e-mailed the SWFA Wednesday afternoon and invited them to meet with her to discuss their concerns. “While we respect your position, you’ll not be surprised to learn that we strongly disagree with it, and wish you had contacted us before you published your posts,” Dobson writes. She explains: “Hydra offers a different– but potentially lucrative–publishing model for authors: a profit share…. As with every business partnership, there are specific costs associated with bringing a book successfully […]
Authors
Awards: PEN/Faulkner Finalists; BN Discover Winners
The finalists for the 2013 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction were announced Wednesday. The winner will be announced on March 19, and the 33rd Annual PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Ceremony & Dinner will be held on Saturday, May 4 at the Folger Shakespeare Library. The finalists are: Amelia Gray, Threats (Farrar, Straus) Laird Hunt, Kind One (Coffee House Press) T. Geronimo Johnson, Hold it ‘Til It Hurts (Coffee House Press) Thomas Mallon, Watergate (Pantheon) Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Everything Begins & Ends at the Kentucky Club (Cinco Puntos Press) Barnes & Noble also announced the winners of their annual Discover Awards: Fiction: […]
BEA Announces This Year’s Buzz Book Panel Titles
BEA organizers have announced the books to be featured on the convention’s three “buzz” book panels for adult, young adult, and middle grade books. with one panel each day starting on Wednesday. The adult panel is on Wednesday afternoon (May 29), with the YA panel on Thursday morning and the middle grade panel on Friday morning. In one marked variation, the adult panel, which usually comprises mostly fiction, will feature four nonfiction books this year. Adult All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood by Jennifer Senior (Ecco, January 2014) Knocking on Heavens Door: The Path to a […]
HMH to Pull Second Lehrer Book HOW WE DECIDE From Stores
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced Friday that it is “taking…off sale” Jonah Lehrer’s 2009 book HOW WE DECIDE. In an email to the Daily Beast HMH publisher Bruce Nichols said an internal review “uncovered significant problems with the book” and as a result, has “no plans to reissue it in the future.” Nichols added that HMH will “shortly alert accounts about How We Decide and offer to refund returns” — similar to the approach taken when the publisher pulled Lehrer’s third book, IMAGINE, from sale last July, following the discovery of fabricated quotes — but that PROUST WAS A NEUROSCIENTIST, Lehrer’s […]
Fountain, Solomon, Caro Among NBCC Winners
The National Book Critics Circle Award winners were announced Thursday evening: FICTION Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (Ecco) NONFICTION Andrew Solomon, Far From the Tree (Scribner) BIOGRAPHY Robert A. Caro, The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Knopf) AUTOBIOGRAPHY Leanne Shapton, Swimming Studies (Blue Rider Press) CRITICISM Marina Warner, Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights (Belknap Press) POETRY D. A. Powell, Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys (Graywolf Press) Some of the suspense was deflated when, a little less than an hour before the NBCC ceremony began at 6 PM, NYT publishing reporter […]
People, Etc.
Patricia Arancibia has joined Apple as head of the iBookstore’s European operations. Previously she was editorial director, International Acquisition & Relations – International Digital Content at Barnes & Noble. In the UK, PFD agent Robert Caskie is taking on the additional new role of chief operating officer of The Rights House Group. Publicity director at Profile Books Ruth Killick is leaving the publisher after 11 years to establish her own PR firm in Bristol this May. Writer, educator and activist Monica Carter, has been named the Lambda Literary Foundation’s LGBT Writers in Schools program coordinator. The trickling of BEA author breakfast […]