MJ Franklin will move over from social editor at the NYT to join the NYT Book Review this summer as an assistant preview editor. Franklin will help cover literary fiction, memoir and essays, and he will lead their young adult coverage. Aubrey Poole, former editor at the Jimmy Patterson imprint, has joined subscription box service Literati as Acquisitions Editor and Curator for children’s books ages 0-12. Rhodes Murphy has joined the publicity agency Books Forward team as a publicist, and Rachel Hutchings has been hired as a digital marketing strategist. Quarto joined the growing list of publishers making clear they […]
Legal
Another Trumpsuit, Looking to Block Mary Trump’s Forthcoming Book
Donald Trump’s younger brother Robert Trump is said by a person familiar with the matter to have filed asking the Queens County Surrogate’s Court for a temporary restraining order blocking publication of Mary Trump’s forthcoming book TOO MUCH AND NEVER ENOUGH: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man. The suit is being filed there because it charges that her publication would violate a nondisclosure agreement related to the settlement of the estate of Fred Trump Sr., the president’s father. The book is scheduled for July 28 publication. Once again, the Trumps are using attorney Charles Harder, who failed […]
Bolton Book Winds Up Posted Online for Free
After a Federal judge denied the government’s request for a temporary restraining order blocking publication of John Bolton’s THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED, due to publish Tuesday, on Saturday night unauthorized free PDF versions of book wound up online. Something similar had happened with Michael Wolff’s FIRE AND FURY, when Wikileaks posted a free version of the UK edition for a few hours. In that case, Macmillan ceo John Sargent later estimated the illegal posting had likely lost them sales of 400,000 to 500,000 units. This time the file looks to be the regular US edition. It seems to have […]
Freedom to Publish Is Alive In the Age of Trump, Though Bolton Will Likely Forfeit Earnings
On Saturday morning Judge Royce Lamberth denied the Department of Justice’s half-hearted argument to “stop” publication of John Bolton’s book THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED, since it is already out in the world. “While Bolton’s unilateral conduct raises grave national security concerns, the government has not established that an injunction is an appropriate remedy.” Or, for that matter, an effective remedy, since “in the Internet age, even a handful of copies in circulation could irrevocably destroy confidentiality.” While Judge Lamberth “is persuaded that defendant Bolton likely jeopardized national security by disclosing classified information in violation of his nondisclosure agreement obligations,” […]
Judge Suspects the Bolton Horse Is Out of the Barn, But He Still Faces Jeopardy For Publishing without Approval
The likely futility of the DOJ’s request for a temporary restraining order blocking publication of John Bolton’s THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED — which has effectively already been published and distributed around the world — was clear in a lengthy Friday afternoon hearing before Judge Royce Lamberth as soon as he deployed his Texas lexicon: “It seems to me…that the horse, as we used to say in Texas, seems to be out of the barn.” The government’s weak response was that “the onus is on Mr. Bolton to figure out how to” recall the hundreds of thousands of books in […]
Judge Sets Friday Afternoon Hearing on Bolton Book; Filing Explains Why the Book Can’t be Stopped
Judge Royce C. Lamberth set a hearing for 1:00 PM on Friday, via videoconference, to hear arguments on the Department of Justice’s request for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction blocking the release of John Bolton’s book. Meanwhile, papers filed by Bolton’s attorneys explain why — no matter how the judge rules — release of the book cannot be stopped. “There is nothing that Ambassador Bolton can do to stop the book from becoming public on June 23; indeed, it is already public.” As Simon & Schuster ceo Jonathan Karp attests, “More than 200,000 copies of the book have […]