Lagardere Publishing issued their abbreviated second quarter/first half of the year trading update which reports sales–with the second-quarter generating 494.7 million euros–but not profits. Sales are up less than two percent for this quarter after registering slightly above flat in the first quarter. In the US, “growth continued at a rapid pace, driven in particular by the outstanding success of the latest Stephenie Meyer saga.” The UK had “a highly satisfying quarter thanks to bestsellers and children’s books” and in France, Larousse and Hatier “recorded strong growth, but literature saw a further decline.” Overall, the company predicts that “given the […]
S&S Sues Foxy Brown, Lil' Kim
The AP says the Simon & Schuster has filed two separate suits in NY State court against female rappers Foxy Brown (Inga Marchand) and Lil’ Kim (Kimberly Jones) for books they did not deliver. The publisher says they paid Brown $75,000 in 2005 for an autobiography due on February 2006, and that they paid Lil’ Kim $40,000 in 2003 for a novel that was due in June 2004. Spokesman Adam Rothberg says, “both accepted the money and both books never were delivered.” Both women also served stints in prison, Kim in 2005 and Brown in 2007. I guess two was […]
Stephen King Short Story in Short Online Videos
Take Stephen King’s previously unpublished story N., about “a psychiatrist who becomes the victim of the same mysterious and deadly obsession as his patient,” set for inclusion in his new book of stories JUST AFTER SUNSET publishing this November and then turning into a Marvel comic book series in 2009. Turn it into a series of 25 two-minute video episodes. Starting on Monday, release a new one every weekday for five weeks. Add multiple viewing and payment options: Free to mobile users through the largest cell-phone companies; through an embedded Flash player that updates automatically; and through CBS’s various online […]
Pushback Over RH UK's New Out-of-Print Language
It’s the story that keeps coming back. This time the focus is Random House UK which, according to Society of Authors deputy general secretary Kate Pool, seeks to redefine out-of-print so that rights are eligible for reversion to an author “only if the publisher cannot supply a physical or electronic copy of a book within a month, or if there have been no royalty earnings for a year.” President of the Association of Authors’ Agents Philippa Milnes-Smith says that some agents had “raised concerns about RH’s approach to negotiating boilerplates…over the terms being proposed and the approaches being made to […]
Eleanor Friede, 87, Book Editor
The former editor and agent died earlier this month at home in Charlottesville, VA. Working at Macmillan in 1969, she offered a $2,000 advance for the “much-rejected” Jonathan Livingston Seagull. “In 1974 Ms. Friede was offered her own imprint at Delacorte Press, where she continued to publish flying books as well as works by writers like Françoise Sagan, Jorge Amado and Hugh Downs. In the early 1980s, after Doubleday acquired Delacorte, she started Eleanor Friede Books, a literary agency.”NYT
Personnel News
Geoffrey Stone has joined Running Press as an editor, focusing on the cookbook program. He was editor-in-chief at Rutledge Hill/Thomas Nelson. Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing has hired Renee Huff as associate marketing manager, mass market. Outgoing Hartford Courant books editor Carole Goldberg posts at the BBCC blog: “It was a privilege to be books editor here…. But perhaps the best part of the job was reading and reviewing authors who were not so well-known, but have tremendous talent…. I will spend some time on Cape Cod and then hope to recast myself as a freelance reviewer, primarily for the […]