With Tuesday’s release of Boris Kachka’s HOTHOUSE, multiple takes on publishing are available this week. Robert Gottlieb‘s own condensed version of the history of FSG in the New Yorker is well worth reading, and includes some of his own asides. (“Alfred [Knopf] really promoted that borzoi, convincing a lot of people that ‘A Borzoi Book’ guaranteed quality. Readers couldn’t know that the Knopfs thought borzois were a particularly stupid breed of dog.”) Gottlieb finds “this vigorous and often diverting trot through the history of an important cultural institution is frequently slapdash and overwrought in its determination to show just how […]
News
More Obama Kindle Fires
The NY Post looks into ways that Amazon has supported President Obama. They cite data from the Center for Responsive Politics indicating Amazon employees donated over $116,000 to the president’s 2012 re-election campaign (and roughly $25,000 to the Romney campaign). Separately, the paper quotes the Amazon Web Services site, which touts how the Obama campaign used their technology in the campaign. “The AWS solution helped facilitate the fund-raising of hundreds of millions of dollars, prioritized millions of phone calls and coordinated thousands of volunteers.” But the Post errs in saying Amazon’s announced 5,000 new warehouse employees will “increase Amazon’s workforce […]
Vanity Fair On The Harper Lee Lawsuit
Harper Lee’s lawsuit against her former agent Sam Pinkus filed in May merits a lengthy feature by Mark Seal in the August issue of Vanity Fair (the magazine published a brief excerpt online earlier this week and provided us with a PDF copy of the entire piece.) While Seal quotes liberally from Lee’s original complaint, and also draws on Charles Shields’ unauthorized biography of Lee for some of the publishing background, he also paints a fuller portrait of the author, now 87 and living in an assisted living facility in Monroeville, Alabama. Though a friend said she is “paralyzed on […]
With The Merger Complete, Some of Penguin Random House’s Next Steps
Following the merger of Penguin and Random House into a single global entity, a new corporate website is already live, complete with a merged company history and new @penguinrandomhouse.com email exchanges (though the company says the “immensity and technical complexity of the project” means US and Canadian staffers won’t switch over to the new email addresses for months.) In a letter to US staff, Penguin Random House ceo Markus Dohle said he has “learned a lot” from meetings and conversations since the merger announcement eight months ago. “You have delivered a strong performance over the past eight months, during a time when […]
People, Etc.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg officially has declared Tuesday as “G.P. Putnam’s Sons Day,” in recognition of the publisher’s 175th anniversary. Bloomberg said: “The story of G.P. Putnam’s Sons has it all – entrepreneurship, determination, romance, big dreams. It is a classic New York City story, and on this wonderful occasion, today, we join Putnam’s extended family and many readers across the world in looking ahead to the next exciting chapter.” Michael Foster, who bought control of the UK agency PFD and merged it with his MF Management in 2010 to form The Rights House, has sold his shares back […]
BISG Looks to Update Mission for Changing Times
At the close of Wednesday’s Making Information Pay conference, current BISG (Book Industry Study Group) chairman and Hachette Book Group president Ken Michaels addressed the importance of industry cooperation, particularly now that a simple “linear, rational, supply chain that we recognize and understand…no longer exists.” He asked, “the most important question I can convey from the podium today is this…. Can you really go it alone in isolation without participation in an industry group like BISG?” At a time when many have been intimidated about working together, even on common problems, Michaels said, “The important thing is that BISG continues […]