In a year-end letter to staff, Penguin Random House CEO Nihar Malaviya notes the challenges and successes the company had in 2023. “We have made significant changes, all to better position ourselves for the future,” he writes. “Many of these were exciting, but I also want to acknowledge that several others have been very difficult and challenging.” Though the memo is light on details, he notes the blockbuster publication of SPARE and expanding the company’s audio list as highlights. He continues, “We have sold more books this year than last year, our overall revenues are higher, and we have gained […]
Dealmaker Updates – December
Ask an Expert: Vicky Bijur
Vicky Bijur started her eponymous literary agency in 1988 after working at Oxford University Press and for the Charlotte Sheedy Agency. She represents fiction and non-fiction and has served as president of the Association of Authors’ Representatives, now the Association of American Literary Agents (AALA). She has been on the AALA Royalties Committee since 1993 and is chair of the AALA Ethics Committee. What are some questions to ask a prospective agent? 1) Will you keep me reasonably informed throughout the process of selling my book? For example, can we discuss the list of publishers to whom you would submit […]
People 12/13
Meta Knew About Legal Issues With AI Training, Authors’ Suit Claims
In an update to their AI copyright infringement case against Meta, plaintiffs Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Christopher Golden allege that, as early as 2020, lawyers for Meta knew there were “legal problems” with using copyrighted books within the dataset to train their AI tool Llama. Kadrey, et al. are now joined by authors Michael Chabon, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Junot Díaz, Andrew Sean Greer, David Henry Hwang, Matthew Klam, Laura Lippman, Rachel Louise Snyder, Ayelet Waldman, and Jacqueline Woodson in the class action suit. Llama uses The Pile, a dataset for training large language models that contains Books3, a corpus of […]
Distribution: Vendome Press
Abrams announced it has expanded its partnership with Vendome Press to become its international distributor, beginning July 1. Abrams has been distributing Vendome in North America for 20 years. According to the agreement, Abrams will “distribute Vendome internationally in the UK, Europe, the Middle East, South Africa, and India through Abrams & Chronicle Books, a joint venture that provides full sales and distribution services. Latin America and Asia will be handled through Abrams’ export teams while Australia and New Zealand will continue to be sold through Thames & Hudson Australia.” Abrams president and CEO Mary McAveney said in a release, […]