Julia Cheiffetz will return to HarperCollins as executive editor for Dey Street Books, starting October 6. She had been editorial director at Amazon Publishing until recently, prior to which she worked at Harper and Harper Studio. Another longtime Amazon executive announced plans to leave the company. Bill Carr, 47, has worked at Amazon for 15 years, and currently serves as head of digital music and video. He plans to leave at the end of the year. A spokesperson told the WSJ Carr wanted to spend time with family and “has other plans after that but not in the near term […]
Legal
UK Publishers Association Asks Government to Investigate Unnamed eBookselling Monopoly
UK trade group the Publishers Association issued “an eight point plan for growth” in book and journal publishing with recommendations for the government. The one drawing the most attention is a very polite, British request to consider whether having one company dominate ebookselling and online bookselling is a good idea. Amazon is not mentioned by name, and PA chief executive Richard Mollet insists to the FT, “This is a genuine appeal for information. It would be disappointing if this were interpreted as an act of aggression” against that unnamed dominant company. The document asserts that “the book retail market in […]
European Court Approves Lower Taxes for eBooks; Management Buyout At Book People
Long after Luxembourg and France decided for themselves, the European Court has ruled that it really is ok for individual countries to charge lower Value Added Tax rates on ebooks. Reduced VAT was always allowed on printed books, but the statute never mentioned ebooks — which most countries took to mean that ebooks had to be charged normal, full VAT. Luxembourg was the notable exception, turning it into the server farm for digital media in Europe, and then France joined in more recently. The court came to the clarifying decision in a case brought by Finland over the difference between print […]
Slaughter Squares Off with IRS Over Self-Employment Tax On Royalties
Last week Forbes uncovered two previously unreported lawsuits in US tax court which saw thriller writer Karin Slaughter square off against the Internal Revenue Service. While the suits themselves are interesting on their own, they are particularly relevant for authors with respect to the classification of book royalties as self-employment income, something the IRS has held for more than six decades. The first suit, which Slaughter settled with the IRS in July, covered the 2008 tax year, for which the IRS “had been demanding $146,155 in tax and a $29,231 penalty on top of the $1.14 million [Slaughter] originally paid.” […]
Coincidentally, Amazon’s Apple Settlement Notifications Immediately Follow Apple’s Event
Isn’t it an amazing coincidence that just as Apple is receiving massive media coverage for their introduction of new iPhones, Apple Pay and Apple Watch, Amazon has dispatched the latest round of consumer notification emails to ebook purchasers about the pending settlement with Apple? Of course consumer notification is “directed” by the court, so Amazon has to do this — as will all the other etailers (including the iBookstore) at some point. So consider this Amazon’s response to Apple’s recent promotion of books by George Orwell…. The salient point for consumers is that they only have until October 31 to […]
Apple Shareholders Sue Executives Claiming Agency Pricing Lawsuit “Caused Damages”
Apple may have settled its ongoing litigation over ebook pricing with the plaintiff states and consumer class earlier this summer (pending the outcome of the company’s appeal of Judge Cote’s 2013 ruling), but some of the same issues return in a new, derivative lawsuit launched by a single shareholder last Thursday in Santa Clara County California State Court. That complaint claims that Apple ceo Tim Cook and other executives, including Eddy Cue and directors Al Gore and Bill Campbell, “bear responsibility for ensnaring Apple in a multi-year anticompetitive scheme” and engaged in “breach of fiduciary duties, waste of corporate assets, and unjust […]