Audible and the publishers who sued the company over the planned Captions feature adding scrolling text to audiobooks may be close to a resolution. According to Audible attorney Emily Reisbaum, in a letter to Judge Valerie Caproni on December 27, “there are only a few outstanding issues requiring further negotiation.” In that update, Reisbaum, saying “we write on behalf of all parties,” asked the court for still more time to continue negotiations. Given that they have been asking for extensions since the beginning of October, Judge Caproni had ordered on December 18 that “any further request for suspension of consideration […]
Legal
People, Etc.
Jessica Breen will join Basic Books as marketing director on January 6. She is currently digital marketing strategist at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Cassandra Pelham Fulton has been promoted to editorial director, Graphix. Due to an editing error, we left out Sasha Quinton’s first name from yesterday’s announcement on her move to Scholastic. Bookselling New bookstore Still North Books and Bar opened in Hanover, NH on Thursday. The Barnes & Noble in Greenfield, WI near Southridge Mall will close in summer 2020 when its lease expires. A hospital and primary care clinic will move into the space. Legal The European Court of […]
Snowden’s Book Proceeds Belong to the Government, Judge Rules
Edward Snowden must submit proceeds from his memoir Permanent Record and related speaking engagements to the US government, ruled District Judge Liam O’Grady December 17. Judge O’Grady granted the government’s motion for partial summary judgment, ruling that there was no issue of fact in the lawsuit claiming that Snowden had broken his CIA employment contract by not submitting authored works for pre-publication review. “The contractual language of the Secrecy Agreements is unambiguous,” O’Grady wrote in his decision. “Snowden accepted employment and benefits conditioned upon prepublication review obligations.” Snowden had argued that he had failed to participate because, among other concerns, […]
Australian Antitrust Commission Has Some Concerns About Cengage McGraw-Hill Merger
The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) released a 17-page statement of issues regarding the planned merger of Cengage and McGraw-Hill, the result of a review begun in September. The report outlines two primary “preliminary concerns”: First, that the merger will result in “higher prices, reduced quality or a more limited product range for students in Australia”; and second, that it will “further reduce the already limited number of major publishers with whom higher education authors can publish their works.” Interested parties have until January 20 to submit comments and information, with a final decision due from the commission March […]
People, Etc.
At Trident Media Group, Martha Wydysh and Sulamita Garbuz have both been promoted to associate agents. Nora Rawn joins as foreign rights agent. She was most recently senior editor for Lonely Planet. The late Monika Schoeller, longtime publisher of S. Fischer Verlag and daughter of publisher Georg von Holtzbrinck, was remembered at a service in Germany on Monday. Best Of The New York Times Book Review released its list of 100 Notable Books of 2019. That joins the list of top 100 books from the Washington Post, and the big best books of the year package from the NY Public […]
Briefs
Ailah Ahmed has been promoted to publishing director at Little Brown UK. Picks Way to go, GMA! After announcing their first two Cover to Cover Book Club picks in the middle of the month, the program is on it for December — with an early announcement that Tomi Adeyemi‘s Children of Virtue and Vengeance is their December Book Club selection. Bookselling As Barnes & Noble faces a lawsuit from a veteran former California bookseller alleging age discrimination and claiming that the chain’s real strategy is “we’re no longer hiring book people. going forward, we’re only hiring sales people,'” ceo James […]