Chooseco’s lawsuit against Netflix over their interactive film Black Mirror: Bandersnatch has been settled, as the parties informed US District Court Judge William Sessions III on Monday at a status conference. The terms remain confidential, but “the parties did tell the judge of one slightly unusual condition — the judge’s Feb. 2020 opinion denying Netflix’s dismissal motion would have to be vacated.” The judge agreed, and thus “chose to pretend he never questioned whether Netflix’s film was explicitly misleading,” as THR puts it. In February, Judge Sessions had found that the existing facts were insufficient to support dismissal. In particular, he […]
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Kelsey Nolan has joined Ze Books and Unnamed Press as a publicity and marketing manager. She previously worked at the Los Angeles Times as the events programming manager. Cindy Kim has been promoted to associate editor for Little Simon. Andree Abecassis, 81, died November 4 at home in Berkeley, CA, following a brief struggle with cancer. For many years she worked at Ann Elmo Agency, founded by two of her aunts, and recently she had started working with Heyday Books. Best of 2020 The New York Public Library released their Best Books package, which includes top 10s for adults, poetry, […]
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Annysa Polanco has been promoted to director, diversity, equity & inclusion at Penguin Random House. In the coming year, the company will add “more fully-dedicated positions” in diversity, equity & inclusions roles across the divisions, including a new “board-level DE&I leadership position” that will report directly to PRH US ceo Madeline McIntosh. Polanco will report to that new executive once the role is filled. Michael DeFazio had been promoted to vice president & executive director, production planning, analytics, and paper purchasing, Penguin Random House. Film/TV Production outfit The Mazur Kaplan Company — run by bookseller Mitchell Kaplan and producer Paula […]
Briefs: Mary Trump’s Continuing Sales, and More
Mary Trump’s TOO MUCH AND NEVER ENOUGH sold over 1.35 million units across all formats during its first week on sale in the US, Simon & Schuster reported. Another hardcover reprint will give them 1.35 million copies in print when it delivers. That suggests continuing sales of about 400,000 units after pre-orders and the first day on sale, and an added 200,000 hardcovers in print since their first sales announcement a week ago. NPD Bookscan charted sales of over 337,000 hardcovers in the channels they measure, through July 18. Russell Ackerman and John Schoenfelder at Addictive Picture and producer Jay […]
Kobo Brings Subscriptions to Canada, Launches New Device
Kobo has launched their subscription reading service Kobo Plus in Canada, three and a half years after starting with subscriptions in Holland and Belgium. The company notes, “Rakuten Kobo recognizes books as the next frontier for subscriptions in Canada. Further, Kobo has seen demand for this service in global markets.” It is priced at $9.99 a month (CA). They say that in Holland, the program brought new readers and customers to digital (or at least to their service): “60 per cent of the country’s Kobo Plus subscribers had never before purchased an a-la-carte eBook from Kobo.” They say it has […]
Briefs: Ingram Reports Hack, and More
Ingram Content Group announced on Thursday that they had “recently identified unauthorized access within” CoreSource, their digital asset management and distribution platform. They report “a CoreSource customer’s account was used for unauthorized downloads of some publishers’ titles.” Those publishers have been alerted and Ingram is “working directly with them to monitor the situation.” They note, “Immediately upon identifying the unauthorized access and suspect downloads, we launched a thorough investigation, took measures to disable the impacted accounts and blocked any further unauthorized access. We also engaged a third-party professional computer security firm to assist. We highly value the security and confidentiality of our […]