Once Andrew Wylie and Random House settled their summertime differences over who controlled the e-rights to select backlist titles, all had been quiet on the Odyssey Editions front – or so it seems. But an open letter published in today’s Bookseller Daily indicates the French Publishers Association (SNE) is still very unhappy with Wylie for setting up shop as a digital publisher, and that at least four publishers – including Gallimard, which represents about 50% of Wylie’s rights business in the country – stopped doing business with the agency starting in July. The letter, which includes 50 signatories such as […]
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Analysts Split on Whether to Upgrade or Downgrade B&N Stock
Today Goldman analysts downgraded B&N stock from Neutral to Sell and cut the stock price target from $15 to $13, saying that “following management’s recent proxy victory we believe a transaction is less likely.” Yesterday, however, Channel Trend Inc. went the other way, upgrading company stock from Unfavorable to Neutral. The share price dropped to $15.87 and is currently down in pre-market trading.Street Insider
Shaffer’s Publisher Clarifies Government’s Role In Changing New Book
Publisher of Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer’s just-released OPERATION DARK HEART Thomas Dunne Books has addressed the reports that began with the Department of Defense asking for changes in the book and have led recently to rumors of a Pentagon-sponsored burning of the first printing. “The true facts are that the government bought the first printing in its entirety and we destroyed and recycled those copies at their request,” Dunne writes. The changes made to the manuscript “were made at the request of the author,” Dunne says, after meeting with government officials to hear their concerns. He adds, “The Department of […]
Internal Bloomsbury Motivational Video Goes Online–And Then Goes Away Again
For a few hours today a Bloomsbury UK sales conference that was accidentally made “public” on YouTube was discovered and served as the book trade distraction of the day. Something similar happened earlier this spring when Penguin’s video take on “Empire State of Mind” was accidentally public online for a short period. By the afternoon, the Bloomsbury UK players’ take on the copyrighted Glee cast version of the song “Don’t Stop Believin” was gone again. On Twitter, reactions ran from gleeful to glum, since the music video also included a mock-serious narrated set-up from company executive Richard Charkin (who termed […]
Books In the News: NYT Breaks Woodward, Questions for Betancourt
The NYT “obtained” an embargoed copy of Bob Woodward’s OBAMA’S WARS in advance of next week’s release–and serialization in the Washington Post. The Times leads with the theme that some of President Obama’s national security team has doubted his Afghanistan strategy and “spent much of the last 20 months quarreling with one another over policy, personalities and turf.” The Post followed with their own story, emphasizing even more explicitly than the Times that Obama wanted “to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan” rather than triple troop levels, “repeatedly pressing his top military advisers for an exit plan that […]
WSJ to Launch Weekend Pull-Out Book Review, Under Robert Messenger
The NY Observer says that the Wall Street Journal has hired Robert Messenger–who has been at The Weekly Standard, The Atlantic, and the New York Sun–to run a new pull-out book review section set to appear in the newspaper’s weekend edition later this month. One source tells them it will carry a “significant” number of pages, but that’s all they for details. Current WSJ books editor Erich Eichman will report to Messenger. The book reviews will be inserted into a secret new section being edited by Gary Rosen, though Messenger reports to editorial page editor Paul Gigot.Observer