The full, 11-page letter from California attorney that Charles J. Harder as litigation counsel for Donald Trump sent to Holt president and publisher Steve Rubin and FIRE AND FURY author Michael Wolff has been posted online. (Note that the letter was actually dispatched to generic publicity@ and rights@ email addresses for Holt, along with a nonexistent domain — webmaster@macmillanusa.com.) The full text expands on the key allegations that we covered earlier in the day — “Your publication of the false/baseless statements about Mr. Trump gives rise to, among other claims, defamation by libel, defamation by libel per se, false light […]
Legal
Publishing and Taxes: Tips and TBDs
Like most Americans, publishing people are trying to understand the implications of the complicated new tax law. For many that will be a long and complicated process, and since the new law applies to tax from 2018 on, there is no rush for answers. But a few items jump out immediately. One is a false concern, crystallized in a NYT column from earlier in the week that noted, “Another deduction that is disappearing is one for fees paid to agents, other outside managers or headhunters, who take a commission on salary directly from an individual.” The key word here is […]
Simon & Schuster’s Extensive Answer to Milo’s Latest Motion
One story from 2017 that looks like it will continue on well into 2018 (or even beyond) is Milo Yiannopoulos’s legal challenge of Simon & Schuster’s cancellation of his publishing contract. Having lost their effort to shut the case down by arguing that Yiannopoulos had actually agreed to the cancellation, the publisher responded on Thursday in extensive filings to Yiannopoulos’s own motion for summary judgment — now moving on more to the heart of the matter. Casual readers may be interested in some of the small details — there is official confirmation that Allum Bokhari was Yiannopoulos’s ghost writer (BuzzFeed had said he was paid […]
Avedon Estate Calls for Withdrawal, Correction of Biography
The Richard Avedon Foundation called on Spiegel & Grau to cease publication of the just-released biography Avedon: Something Personal by Norma Stevens and Steven Aronson, saying that “much of the book needs to be corrected or retracted, if not entirely disavowed and discontinued, due to alleged factual inaccuracies.” The foundation asserts “the book is filled with countless inaccuracies” while also claiming “it has been written under false pretenses” and “contains substantial sections that are taken, with only light editing and rewriting, from an unfinished work of fiction that Richard Avedon had been writing prior to his death in collaboration with author Doon […]
Skyhorse Employee Unionization Vote Falls Short
A bid to unionize Skyhorse employees has fallen short, with 18 votes in favor of joining United Auto Workers Local 2110, and 28 against. The months-long union drive sought to increase employee compensation, restore personal time off and sick days that had been reduced, provide greater job security (noting in 2017 the company “laid off 12 employees with little to no warning”) and ensure Skyhorse complies with OSHA laws following complaints of working during water outages, and contending with facilities in “disrepair,” among other areas of negotiation. Twenty-three additional ballots were challenged by the union proponents, though it appears that would not affect […]
Swedish Academy Tainted By Reports of Nobel Prize Leaks, Allegations of Sexual Assault
Two weeks after Swedish media reported on allegations from 18 women of sexual assault and harassment by Jean-Claude Arnault, the artistic director and co-owner of a prominent cultural organization called Forum – Current Place of Culture (but referred to in Sweden as The Club), a new story alleges that he leaked the winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature in advance on multiple occasions. Arnault’s wife and co-owner of Forum Katarina Frostenson Arnault is a member of the Swedish Academy. Dagens Nyheter reports that the Academy has retained law firm Hammarskiöld & Co. to “investigate each member’s ties to [Mr. Arnault], and if […]