There could be a battle of the billionaires brewing at Barnes & Noble, as companies controlled by investor Ron Burkle disclosed to the SEC that they have more than doubled their stake in the bookseller recently. Burkle’s companies now control 16.8 percent of the bookseller’s stock. That’s still only about half as much as the big block of stock controlled by chairman Len Riggio. Burkle’s recent purchases likely played a role in the recent upturn in BN’s stock, which lifted after reporting strong pre-orders for the nook. (Traders had been betting against BN, holding a lot of stock shorts that […]
New Google Settlement Drops Foreign-Language Works, and Gives Orphans a Fiduciary
Bowing to pressure from foreign governments and the Department of Justice, the revised Google Books Settlement agreement presented to the District Court shortly before midnight on Friday limits the scope of the scheme to works registered with the US Copyright Office and books published in the UK, Canada and Australia. As part of that change, the named plaintiffs have been expanded to include authors and publishers from those countries, and British, Australian and Canadian rightsholders will gain representation of the Book Rights Registry board. Expressing a less expansive view than he did a year ago when announcing the first settlement […]
AP Reads Palin
The embargo on the Sarah Palin book was broken easily as the AP purchased an early copy yesterday. Among her claims that they cite: “Palin bitterly details how she was prevented from delivering a concession speech on election night, how she’d been kept “bottled up” from reporters during the campaign and prevented in many ways from just being herself. She also contends she was prepped to give non-answers during her debate with Joe Biden.” She calls Katie Couric “badgering” and “contends the anchor chose ‘gotcha’ moments while leaving the candidate’s more substantive remarks on the cutting room floor.” Also, “Palin […]
Tracking the Takeoff of Twilight
Another round of Twilight interest is building with the release next Friday of the movie version of New Moon, and a rare appearance on Oprah today by author Stephenie Meyer. Time looks to chart the takeoff portion of Meyer’s career. Publisher Megan Tingley recalls when the book was published in fall 2005, “All the signs were there, but at the beginning they were modest. The sales kept getting a little higher each week. It wasn’t a gigantic phenomenon overnight — I think people think that now, but it wasn’t.” A year later, New Moon launched with a slightly higher print […]
Swede Offers "A Mountain of Dirty Laundry" In Rare Tell-All About Ikea
Former Ikea executive Johan Stenebo (who also spent time as personal assistant to company founder Ingvar Kamprad) is among the first to challenge the furniture-retailer’s glossy public image from the inside. Spiegel Online says the tell-all book “has attracted much attention in Sweden. It is the first time in the more than 60-year history of Ikea that negative comments have been made by a senior staff member in public. It’s clear that the book is some sort of payback: a mountain of dirty laundry divided into 14 chapters.” They add “the book claims that common preconceptions about Ikea and Kamprad […]
People
Harper UK publishing director Wayne Brookes is moving to Pan Macmillan as publishing director for fiction, reporting to publisher Jeremy Trevathan.