Derek Krissoff has been named the new editor in chief for the University of Nebraska Press, effective July 16. He has been a senior acquisitions editor at the University of Georgia Press since 2006. John W. Warren has joined Georgetown University Press as marketing and sales director. He has spent the past twelve years as marketing director of RAND Corporation’s publications department. KC Smythe will retire on June 15 from his position as national account manager at Hachette Book Group, after 10 years with the company. Prior to Hachette, he spent 17 years at Ingram, mostly in the buying department, and 6 years as […]
Legal
Class Action Suit Filed Against PublishAmerica Alleging “Deceptive Trade Practices”
After years of news reports recounted all manner of dubious practices with respect to its treatment of authors, PublishAmerica is now the defendant in a class-action lawsuit filed June 11 in Maryland State Court alleging a longstanding history of “deceptive trade practices.” In the complaint, first reported on by Writer Beware, plaintiffs Darla Yoos, Edwin McCall, and Kerry Levine say PublishAmerica “presents itself as a traditional publisher but makes money off of its authors” by “falsely representing the services it offered”; provides “services not reasonably designed to promote book sales” leading to significant expenditures by authors; publishes books “riddled with […]
Barnes & Noble Chairman Riggio Will Pay $29 Million To Settle Shareholder Suit Over College Acquisition
The long-running litigation surrounding Barnes & Noble’s August 2009 acquisition of BN College from company founder and chairman Leonard Riggio is finally over, as Riggio has agreed to settle a series of lawsuits launched by shareholders with a $29 million payment from personal funds. But he won’t actually pay out any money personally; rather, he will forgo some money that is currently owed to him by Barnes & Noble. The settlement reduces by $22.75 million a still outstanding $150 million promissory note that Barnes & Noble owes to Riggio as part of College’s acquisition, plus a $6.3 million reduction in […]
Print Publishing Is Expensive, DOJ Tells Judge Cote
The Department of Justice has already received over 150 comments, comprising over 200 pages, on the proposed ebook pricing settlement, and expects “a similar or greater volume of comments” to come in between now and the June 25 deadline. Recognizing that print publication is an expensive process, Justice has asked Judge Cote to excuse the department from publishing the comments and the department’s responses in the Federal Register, estimating that publication costs would exceed $100,000. Instead, they ask for permission to publish everything electronically on the antitrust division’s web site, promising that will allow Justice to keep to the court’s […]
Google Settles French Scanning Lawsuits; Creates Commercial Model for Out-of-Print Access
Google Books has achieved in France what the company has been unable to do in the US: They have settled the remaining lawsuits over their book scanning with the French Publishers Association (Syndicat national de l’édition) and the French Author’s Association (Société des gens de lettres) and instituted a commercial arrangement for selling access to out-of-print books that Google has scanned. Strategic Partner Development Manager of Google Books France Philippe Colombet says the new “partnerships…will put France ahead of the rest of the world in bringing long lost out-of-print works back to life. From now, publishers will promote and commercialize […]
Barnes & Noble Says Settlement Overreaches, And Punishes the Wrong Parties
Barnes & Noble, with assistance from counsel David Boies at Boies, Schiller & Flexner, has filed a formal objection to the proposed settlement in the agency pricing case. In an argument reminiscent of the Department of Justice’s objections that led to the rejection of the Google Books settlement, BN argues that the settlement imposes “overreaching regulatory provisions” that “will transform the [Antitrust] Division into a regulator” and that the penalties imposed are not remedies actually “sought or mentioned” in the lawsuit itself. They argue that DOJ actually seeks to engage in the settlement in the very behavior they prosecuted for: “The Division […]