Little, Brown made much hay of publishing David Foster Wallace‘s unfinished novel The Pale King on April 15, since that day is tax day (except this year it’s not, thanks to a tardy Congress) and the book features the day-to-day thoughts and deeds of IRS agents. But the book’s actual on-sale date was March 22, which is how Amazon, BN.com and other online retailers started shipping copies to customers – even though most independent bookstores weren’t selling the book yet or hadn’t even received copies, believing or having been told the book was embargoed. “I don’t really understand the confusion,” […]
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Former White House Press Secretary Named Crown Forum Editorial Director; Other Press Bumps Up Author E-Royalties; and More
Former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino has been named editorial director of Crown Forum, where she will acquire and edit six to eight titles annually for the conservative imprint. Perino, who currently works as a communications strategist and Fox News contributor and helped devise the promotional strategy for George W. Bush’s Decision Points, will work out of Washington, DC. Crown has also promoted Sean Desmond to executive editor. Starting Friday, April 1, Other Press will increase its ebook royalty rates to 50 percent of net proceeds once an author’s advance has earned out, and to 30 percent before an […]
Former Washington Post Reporters Will Buy Politics & Prose
Nearly a year after announcing the store was for sale, Politics & Prose will be under the new ownership of former Washington Post reporters Bradley Graham and his wife Lissa Muscatine. Barbara Meade and David Cohen, the widower of Meade’s fellow owner Carla Cohen, chose the couple to buy the store after entertaining five or six bids and determining Graham and Muscatine were “uniquely qualified to extend the store’s reputation as a gathering place for ideas and civic discourse.” At a meeting with store staff, Graham said Politics & Prose has “a very special culture here, a culture we want […]
Catherine Cookson Estate To Sell Digital Books Direct, and Other eNews
Add the estate of Catherine Cookson to the growing number of authors selling digital backlist titles directly (and, in this instance, exclusively through Amazon in the US and UK.) The author’s literary representatives at Sheil Land formed a separate company, Peach Tree Publishing, which will sell 91 Cookson titles as ebooks priced between $1.50 and $5.99. Cookson’s agent Sonia Land engages in some mutual controversy-starting with the Daily Mail by saying she never informed Cookson’s print publishers Transworld or Simon & Schuster of the ebook plan: I haven’t told either firm about the deal and I am sure they are going […]
Borders Asks Court to Authorize $8.3 Million in Executive Bonus Payments
In papers filed last week, Borders asked a federal bankruptcy court to authorize as much as $8.3 million in bonus payments to company executives – including up to $1.7 million to CEO Michael Edwards. Seventeen executives are covered by the largest bonus program, which could add between $4.7m and $7.1m, while a second $1.2 million bonus program covers 25 “director-level” managers that court papers say are “critical to the debtors’ reorganization and to ongoing business.” The company said that 70% of its top executives have been with Borders for 18 months or less, and that bonuses were not paid at […]
Briefs: Dorchester Woes Continue; The Brand of Mary Higgins Clark; Penguin Piracy Suit; And More
Dorchester Publishing continues to do its best zombie impression, as a number of authors have learned the ailing company continues to sell digital copies of their work even after they no longer hold the rights, and despite repeated assurances they would stop this practice. Horror writer Brian Keene detailed the situation on his blog, saying that he found unauthorized e-copies of his books under the Dorchester banner selling through various digital outlets. “In the most recent case (iBooks), Dorchester blamed their vendor, Libre Digital, but provided no documentation verifying this. An employee at Apple cast doubt on this explanation. In the […]