Well reported is an email from Kobo chief content officer Michael Tamblyn to authors in their self-publishing program Kobo Writing Life, providing an update on their now-completed review and cleansing of their title catalog. “The review had to happen fast, and we didn’t enjoy it, but with our esteemed 300-year-old retail partner on the front page of major newspapers and some content clearly in violation of our posted standards, we needed to move quickly.” Tamblyn makes clear, “For those few titles that remain unavailable, some feel that we chose a path of censorship. All I can say is that if […]
News
BISG’s Mission Moves From Books to Content
At today’s Book Industry Study Group annual meeting in New York, board chair Ken Michaels unveiled the 40-year-old organization’s new and expanded mission statement after months of work: “BISG’s mission is to facilitate innovation and share solutions for the benefit of all companies and practitioners that create, produce and distribute published content, and the organizations that support them.” That new statement quite specifically omits the word “book,” which tells you something about the likelihood of a name change on the way for the organization as well. Towards the end of the presentation Michaels noted BISG “really isn’t a group that […]
Simon & Schuster, Barnes & Noble Resolve Terms Dispute
After more than eight months of contention, Barnes & Noble and Simon & Schuster have resolved their terms dispute, which agents, authors and some at the publisher itself say resulted in significantly reduced orders and display of S&S books in the bookseller’s stores since January. In a joint statement both Barnes & Noble and S&S said they “look forward to promoting great books by Simon & Schuster authors.” A letter to authors and agents from ceo Carolyn Reidy elaborated a little more on the resolution. Reidy thanked them for their support “during this most difficult period”, adding that she and […]
Hothouse Views
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 […]
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 […]