S&P also bumped up Amazon’s credit rating one notch to ‘BBB-‘ from ‘BB+’, citing the company’s “strong brand, robust performance, and improved credit-protection metrics” during a “difficult retail environment.” In other Amazon news, Mark Bertils puts the lack of Kindle availability in Canada, the UK, and other territories squarely on the shoulder of Jasper Wireless, which is Amazon’s direct wireless partner, not Sprint: “I am willing to bet that Amazon’s contract with Jasper is exclusive. For the Kindle to grow, Jasper has to grow. And the MVNO market is dead everywhere but in the US and Jasper’s specialty — machine-to-machine […]
Dubai Festival Responds to Censorship Allegations
The inaugural Emirates Airlines International Festival of Literature in Dubai got off to a rocky start yesterday with reports that Geraldine Bedell, originally under consideration but not on the festival’s final schedule, had been disinvited because her novel, The Gulf Between Us, contains references to homosexuality. “I do not want our festival remembered for the launch of a controversial book,” the Times of London reports festival director Isobel Abulhoul wrote to Bedell. “If we launched the book and a journalist happened to read it, then you could imagine the political fallout that would follow.” Bedell also told the Times of […]
New (ish) Works by Mailer, Cheever, Dick
The New York Review of Books runs the second of three previously unpublished selections of Norman Mailer’s letters with annotations from the author’s biographer, J. Michael Lennon. John Cheever’s short story “Of Love: A Testimony”, runs in installments throughout the week on FiveChapters.com, its first appearance in over 66 years. And though it’s a bit of a stretch to call it a “new” work by Philip K. Dick, his fifth and final wife Tessa has self-published The Owl of Daylight, which she terms a “tribute” to the novel of the same name her former husband was working on until his […]
Alfred A. Knopf, Jr. Dies
Alfred A. Knopf, Jr., co-founder of Atheneum Publishers (leaving his parents’ company, Knopf, in 1959 to do so), died Saturday at the age of 90 from complications of a fall in mid-January. NYT Obit
Lunch Weekly for Monday, February 16
Deal Reports Just e-mail to deals@PublishersMarketplace if you aren’t using the online form linked below. Report a deal using the online form The Key As usual, the handy key to our Lunch deal categories. While all reports are always welcome, those that include a category will generally receive a higher listing when it comes time to put them all together. “nice deal” $1 – $49,000 “very nice deal” $50,000 – $99,000 “good deal” $100,000 – $250,000 “significant deal” $251,000 – $499,000 “major deal” $500,000 and up FICTION Debut American amateur historian Emma Campion’s historical novel, THE KING’S MISTRESS, the […]
Reed Nearing Deal to Extend Loans
Reed Elsevier is close to securing a “forward-start agreement” to extend about $2bn of loan debt by three years. The Financial Times reports that the deal, which is expected to close in the next few weeks, will see Reed pay up to 225 basis points more than the London interbank rate to lending banks including Barclays and the Royal Bank of Scotland. Reed has about $5bn of debt to refinance before 2012 and “must repay $2bn of ChoicePoint acquisition financing in March 2010 and $2.2bn a year later.” Reed’s $3bn committed back-up bank lines expire in May 2010. Meanwhile, the […]