The final deadline for filing objections to the Google Books Settlement has now passed, and the District Court’s web site shows a wave of new filings, mostly objections. The Computer & Communications Industry Associates filed a brief in support of the agreement, while new objectors include Microsoft and Yahoo, the state of Connecticut, a group of authors led by Harold Bloom, the Internet Archive, the Open Book Alliance (accusing the parties of “a trail of what can only be called misdirection”), Consumer Watchdog, 22 Japanese authors who are key members of the Japan P.E.N. Club, a coalition of authors and […]
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People: Blake to Holt, and More
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 […]
Booker Shortlist Announced
The six finalists for the prize–with the winner to be named October 6–are: A S Byatt, The Children’s Book (Chatto and Windus)J M Coetzee, Summertime (Harvill Secker)Adam Foulds, The Quickening Maze (Jonathan Cape)Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate)Simon Mawer, The Glass Room (Little Brown UK)Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger (Virago) Release
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 […]
People and Bookselling
Two editors at Pocket, including editorial director Maggie Crawford, and an editorial assistant at Simon Spotlight Entertainment were laid off last week, the Observer reports. At Little Brown UK, David Shelley has been promoted to the new position of deputy publisher. French-language bookstore Librairie de France will close at the end of September after 74 years in business at New York’s Rockefeller Center. The store faced a tripling of its rent.NYDN
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 […]