Agency publishers got a measure of what passes for good news in today’s climate on Friday. A judicial panel on multidistrict litigation decided on Friday that the plethora of class action suits alleging conspiracy to fix ebook prices will be consolidated under the jurisdiction of the Southern District of New York. The panel said it “will serve the convenience of the parties and witnesses and promote the just and efficient conduct of this litigation.” The panel noted that “nearly all defendants, including all publishing defendants, are located in New York City, giving it a nexus to the allegations.” And “all […]
People, Etc.
Hilary Redmon will join Ecco as executive editor, focusing on non-fiction, starting on December 19. She has been a senior editor at Free Press. Literary agent Emmanuelle Morgen will join Stonesong on January 5, representing adult and children’s fiction, including women’s fiction and romance, historical fiction, and young adult fiction, and nonfiction in the areas of psychology, pop science, self-help, and memoir. Morgen has been at Judith Ehrlich Literary Management. In the rapidly-consolidating Dutch publishing world, NDC/VBK will put its imprints Contact, Mouria and Augustus together with the two Amstel imprints LJ Veen and Atlas to form a new publishing […]
Briefs: Indie Bookscan Holiday Sales Up 15.5 Percent; Bloomsbury’s New Literary Events Line; and More
The ABA announced that member in-store book sales over the Thanksgiving holiday long weekend, as tracked by Bookscan, increased 15.5 percent over the same week in 2010. Sales in store websites powered by ABA IndieCommerce also increased by 60 percent for the same weekend (plus Cyber Monday) as compared to last year. Ann Patchett’s STATE OF WONDER and Laura Hillenbrand’s UNBROKEN topped the Indie bestseller lists for hardcover fiction and non-fiction, respectively, in 2011. Indie Bestseller Lists page Also from the ABA, this year’s Winter Institute 7 in January will feature a new One Institute, One Read program. Tying in […]
Darcie Chan, Recluse No More
Last week the NYTBR featured Darcie Chan, author of the self-published success The Mill River Recluse, in the Inside the List column, where she noted “I would still love to have a book traditionally published, be it Recluse, my second novel (currently in progress) or a future work.” Now the WSJ has a long feature on her path to success, and continuing discussions with publishers via agent Laurie Liss at Sterling Lord Literistic. Unfortunately the article suffers from some NYT-esque pejoratives and errors of fact, so the account of publisher discussions is open to some interpretation. “A few major publishers” […]
More On the KDP Select Fund
We have an update related to our point yesterday that the cash pool Amazon is paying out to KDP authors who make their ebooks exclusive to Amazon and elect to make titles available for borrowing through the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library is determined at Amazon’s discretion. Spokesperson Sarah Gelman tells us that “KDP will announce each month’s Kindle Owners’ Lending Library fund amount by the 25th of the preceding month. The announcement will be emailed to participating authors and publishers and posted on the KDP website.” As Amazon now says on their site, in a FAQ about the program, “the […]
People, Etc.
PGW will distribute four new clients as of Spring 2012: Paper Punk Books, Tara Books, Readers to Eaters, and Watershed Media. Watershed will also use Constellation for ebook distribution, as will existing PGW client Night Shade Books. Pauline Hsia has joined the Doris S. Michaels Agency as an assistant. She was most recently with the Queens Ledger. Novelist and film critic Gilbert Adair, 66, died earlier this month. Novels by Adair were the basis for the films LOVE AND DEATH IN LONG ISLAND (1997) and THE DREAMERS (2003), and he also wrote film columns for the Sunday Times and the Guardian. Obit