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Amazon’s First Option Amazon has optioned screen rights to Keith Donohue’s THE STOLEN CHILD, Variety reports, and “will move to secure a filmmaker and then a studio partner to turn the fantasy into a live-action feature.” Director of merchandising Laura Porco says: “We are always trying to innovate, based on listening to customers and the things they’re passionate about. This was a book we passed around to our editorial and merchandising teams. Everybody was excited by Keith’s voice and felt this could be a great movie.” Agent Joe Regal comments: “This is all a gamble, but if you’re going to […]

Changing of the Guard at CDS CDS president and co-founder Steve Black is leaving the company “to pursue other interests” following an agreed upon year-long transition, the last of the original team of long-term distribution executives associated with the company. Perseus has hired Sabrina Bracco to rejoin the company next month from Bear Stearns and run the distribution unit, with the title of vp, client services, reporting to Perseus CEO David Steinberger. Bracco worked for Perseus in a variety of roles before going to Bear Stearns, including serving as director of sales operations. CDS Books publisher Roger Cooper now reports […]

Bernard Moves On, Saletan Moves Up; New Boss for Penguin UK; and More Personnel News Harcourt Adult publisher Andre Bernard is leaving after ten years at the company to become vice president of the Guggenheim Foundation. Editor-in-chief Becky Saletan, who joined the house two years ago, will take over Bernard’s role as publisher. Also at Harcourt, Peter Horan has joined the company as a publicist, after two years at St. Martin’s. In the UK, Penguin finally will have a dedicated operational executive again. Peter Field, who runs Penguin and Pearson in Australia, is moving to London as chief executive of […]

UC System May Join Google Library Program The University of California is considering joining other academic libraries participating in the library program of Google Book Search, with the board of regents discussing the possibilities at a meeting last week. As the Daily Californian reports, the UC system has over 34 million books that “could be eligible for digitization” under such a program. UC is already a participant in the Open Content Alliance project, which covers just public domain titles, but “books bound by copyright currently make up about 75 to 80 percent of UC collections.” UC director for library planning […]

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Vrai Pynchon The description of Thomas Pynchon’s forthcoming novel AGAINST THE DAY referred to in Slate yesterday, pulled down from Amazon’s official product page but preserved by a site visitor on Amazon’s discussion board, is indeed by the author, confirmed by Tracy Locke at Penguin Press. Locke adds that the Slate piece incorrectly claimed she “disavowed all knowledge” of the post. “I explained to Troy Patterson that I was unaware that any sort of book description had been posted on Amazon and that I’d not seen it — and therefore could not comment on its accuracy.” Amazon’s Sean Sundwall tells […]