Gillian Blake will join Holt’s adult unit as executive editor on September 21, focusing on “high profile nonfiction acquisitions.” Most recently she had been executive editor at Collins until that unit was reorganized earlier this year. Stacia Decker has joined the Donald Maass Literary Agency as an agent. A former editor at Harcourt and Otto Penzler Books, she is representing mystery, suspense, noir, and crimefiction. Former longtime editor for Word Publishing and Thomas Nelson Laura Kendall died of pneumonia last week in Nashville, Tennessee. Kendall, who was still freelancing, had retired from Nelson in 2005, after two decades of editing […]
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FTC Says Google Books Should Have Privacy Plan–and Google Posts One
The Federal Trade Commission said in a letter to Google on Thursday that the company should be “limiting secondary uses of data collected through Google Books, including uses that would be contrary to reasonable consumer expectations.” David Vladeck, head of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, wrote that “we also agree that it is important for Google to develop a new privacy policy, specific to Google Books, that will apply to the current product, set forth commitments for future related services and features, and preserve commitments made in the existing privacy policy.” Separately, FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz said “the Google Books […]
Google Case: Objection Deadline Moved to Tuesday
Due to “scheduled maintenance” in the Federal Court’s electronic filing system that starts this afternoon at 2 and goes until 8:00 am on Tuesday, September 8, Judge Denny Chin has postponed the deadline for filing objections to the Google Books Settlement and amicus curiae briefs until 10:00 am on the 8th. Note carefully, there is no indication in the judge’s order of a change in the Friday opt-out deadline itself (rightsholders opt out through the settlement web site).
Today in the Google Court Docket
In the latest filings with the court on the proposed Google Books settlement, the biggest new objection comes from the American Society of Media Photographers, the Graphic Artists Guild, the Picture Archive Council of America and the North America Nature Photography Association along with four individual photographers, claiming the agreement favors written copyright owners over visual artists. They say it “would sacrifice the interests of Visual Arts Rights Holders to promote the interests of a subset of copyright owners (authors and publishers) and Google. This abuse of the class action process cannot fairly be judged to be in the public […]
More Objections from Europe, and Amazon Of Course
Yesterday a variety of Dutch publishers filed objections to the Google Books settlement agreement with the Federal District Court, in similar letters from Leopold/Ploegsma; Querido; SWP; Athenaeum – Polak & Van Gennep; and Nijgh & Van Ditmar, citing many of the same objections as other European publishers that we reported on yesterday. Holland’s Unieboek and Spectrum departed from that form letter and sent a different list of objections, including an assertion that “the division of any income between publishers, authors and translators is currently still unclear to us.” New objections were also filed by Czernin Verlag, Sweden’s Liber, and the […]
Europe Objects
It’s a quiet week in most of book publishing but a busy one in the offices of Federal District Court Judge Denny Chin as Friday is the deadline for filing objections to the proposed Google Books settlement agreement. (September 4 is also the deadline for opting out of the settlement entirely.) Until recently, despite the noisy public debate about the sweeping and complex settlement, very few objections of substance had been filed with the court. The most detailed legal objections, covered here previously, were raised by attorney and author Scott Gant in his August 20 filing, while support has come […]