Schuler Books and Music has four stores in Michigan; “all of them have fireplaces and cafes and are designed as comfortable places to hang out.” Now, in their newest location in downtown Grand Rapids, they “may get a liquor license in two to three months, and that innovation may solve the problem all downtown small businesses have — slow evening and weekend business.” Co-owner Bill Fehsenfeld says, “The vision is it’s an enhancement to the bookstore and our cafe and provides an alternate place where people can relax, browse the books and enjoy food from our cafe. We’re feeling this […]
Robert Giroux Memorial
Farrar, Straus and Giroux is organizing a memorial service for Robert Giroux. Speakers and readers will include Jonathan Galassi, Paul Elie, Pat Strachan, Alice Quinn, and Father Patrick Samway. It is scheduled for Wednesday, December 10 at 3 o’clock in St. Paul’s Chapel at Columbia University. The publishers asks that those planning to attend please rsvp to Madeleine.asher@fsgbooks.com, or call 212-206-5359.
Free Books, As Long As You Blog
Thomas Nelson has launched a formal program to enroll interested bloggers and provide them with free review copies of “select titles” in exchange for the promise of a posting of a review of at least 200 words on a blog and at Amazon.com. Nelson ceo and active blogger Mike Hyatt credits his own blog with inspiring the initiative. It “originally came from heightened interest on my blog, around two of our recent releases, Stephen Mansfield’s The Faith of Barack Obama and Lynne Spears’ Through the Storm. My readers, many of whom are active bloggers themselves, wanted to engage in the […]
Sister Suit Story Gets Better
Natasha Boncompagni didn’t get to court before her sister, author Tatiana Boncompagni (Hoover), so instead she’s conducting an active campaign in public. In addition to the e-mail we cited yesterday, Natasha has written extensively to CityFile. She claims that last Wednesday she “refused the emailed offer to essentially buy me off that her agent sent to me” which she says offered $5,000 in to drop any claims to the book Hedge Fund Wives and assign all copyright and domain names to Tatiana. Natasha says, “My sister’s history of lying is a well-known fact both within our family and with her […]
Google Questions, If Not Answers
The settlement with Google is nothing if not complex–the basic agreements runs to 141 pages, before the copious attachments. One of these, intended as a simple summary of the settlement for authors who think they qualify as part of the class action suit, runs 36 pages by itself. There will be lots of questions, both strategic and practical, and most of the answers will only make themselves known over time. Here are just a few that come to mind; feel free to add your own (questions or answers) in the comments field at PublishersMarketplace: — Does making a book available […]
Google Settlement: Following the Money, Now and Later
Just over three years ago the Authors Guild and then the AAP and a group of five publishers filed lawsuits against Google over their library book-scanning project based on the principal that it constituted copyright infringement. Now with all the parties finding different ways of declaring their settlement agreement “historic,” principal has been sufficiently resolved to give way to hopes of commerce and accessibility. Google gets a pathway to a virtual monopoly for an online library of books in the US, and all parties leave the legal issues regarding fair use and orphan works sufficiently unresolved so as to discourage […]