The newsmaking announcements at BEA might have been all about devices and digital, but the agents also showed up to talk about what is going on in their world of rights and royalties, and some interesting tidbits emerged. To start with, if you thought the 25 percent ebook royalty was settled, think again. On Tuesday’s AAR’s Global Publishing Marketplace panel, Jennifer Weltz, partner and rights director at Jean Naggar, stated: “Twenty-five percent shouldn’t be standard in US or anywhere else, we need escalators. When publishers come back to us and say, No, this is standard we can’t give you more, […]
Google Book Engineer Says His Staff Has Grown 50 Percent
Chief Engineer for Google Books James Crawford didn’t reveal much news at his presentation Thursday morning on Seven Years of Google Book Search, but he did mention–in contrast to unsourced allegations on the interwebs recently–that he has grown the engineering team by 50 percent since Google eBooks launched in December. Google has big international hopes that most ebooks they add from around the world will be available worldwide with limited rights issues in most territories (presumably excluding English and Spanish), and Crawford pointed to cases where “the contracts between the authors and publishers are silent or ambiguous on digital rights” as […]
Wylie, As Ever, In the WSJ
So it’s already well-established that, even as I read more “legacy” journalism about book publishing than most folks, I’m still a bit baffled by their process. A prime example is this weekend’s Andrew Wylie (the ‘Jackalope”) feature in the WSJ Magazine. What happens, exactly, when a writer pitches an editor (or vice versa) on doing the exact same credulous story on Andrew Wylie remains a mystery to me. And who is the one who keeps coming up with the great idea of taking a new picture of Wylie scowling menacingly? Wylie is a good and effective agent, but why is […]
Creditors Oppose Borders Bid For More Time, and Seattle’s Best Objects to Contract Cancellation
Borders’ unsecured creditors committee objected to the bookseller’s bid for more time to come up with a plan to exit Chapter 11 in a court filing Thursday afternoon on several grounds. They are “gravely concerned” that extending the exclusivity period up to 120 days “could be detrimental to the interests of the debtors’ general unsecured creditors” and would only work if the committee itself could have the right to “file and solicit a plan at any time” (the unstated purpose of which would likely be to ask for liquidation, though they cite cases in which creditors did draft their own […]
People, Etc.: Pfund Is OUP US President, Koepp to TIHE, and More
Niko Pfund has been named president of Oxford University Press USA, where he has served as acting president since December 2010, continuing to serve as academic publisher as well. Interim editor of Newsweek Steve Koepp is returing to Time (where he had been deputy managing editor of Time magazine and executive editor of Fortune) to become editorial director of Time Home Entertainment, the company’s book and bookazine division. He will oversee the development of books, both print and digital, for all the magazine publisher’s news group, style & entertainment and LIFE brands. University of North Carolina Press is promoting senior […]
Digital Accelerates At Bloomsbury, Which Announces Digital Drama Library with Faber
Bloomsbury, which is readjusting its fiscal year, reported results for the 14 months ending February 28. Since the publisher already disclosed 12-month results recently, we’ll only delve into the highlights and what’s new. Their ebook sales continue to accelerate. They were £1.5 million for all of 2010, and have now registered £1.1 million for the first two months of 2011. Chief executive Nigel Newton says in the release, “This is an exciting time for Bloomsbury: demand for digital delivery, including e-books, is increasing significantly; it will change the publishing business model creating one worldwide market. The recent organisation change is […]