Plenty of Deals An official welcome back and Happy New Year to everyone. There are lots of deal reports to catch up on, with many new ones recently arrived, including film deals for fiction and non-fiction, a big first fiction sale in the UK already sparking worldwide interest, our times as seen through the lens of Today Show, the Wiseguy’s sequel, a bio of the man the FBI considered the most powerful lawyer around, fiction from a Paris Review Discovery winner, and much more. Take yourself up on that New Year’s resolution to join PublishersMarketplace and take full advantage of […]

Canadian Author Challenges US Copyright in Peter Pan Emily Somma, author of AFTER THE RAIN: A New Adventure for Peter Pan, recently published in Canada, has filed a pre-emptive suit in Calfornia to protect her book, asserting that the characters in Peter Pan are now part of the public domain. The question is whether Sir James M. Barrie’s copyright, which he gave to the Great Ormand Street Hospital for Sick Children in London, would have expired 50 years after his death, in 1987. A lawyer for the hospital says the 1976 copyright extension act protects the work until 2023. Somma […]

Canadian Author Challenges US Copyright in Peter Pan Emily Somma, author of AFTER THE RAIN: A New Adventure for Peter Pan, recently published in Canada, has filed a pre-emptive suit in Calfornia to protect her book, asserting that the characters in Peter Pan are now part of the public domain. The question is whether Sir James M. Barrie’s copyright, which he gave to the Great Ormand Street Hospital for Sick Children in London, would have expired 50 years after his death, in 1987. A lawyer for the hospital says the 1976 copyright extension act protects the work until 2023. Somma […]

More brief updates and distractions. Happy New Year!: Pope John Paul’s THE ROME TRIPTYCH, the Meditations of John Paul II, written over the last several months, will be published shortly. The Church says it’s “A poetic meditation about themes of finality, a last will of sorts. The pope will discuss the choice of his successor, for example.” Wire story Books editor Geeta Sharma-Jensen at the Milwaukee Journal has a somewhat unusual take on the books of the year: “The good novel was remarkably sparse, leaving one with the persistent idea that it was merely lying fallow, germinating in the imaginations […]

Not a full meal, but here are some links and bits if you’re interested: * Clint Eastwood filed a $10 million libel lawsuit against Patrick McGilligan and St. Martin’s Press over the unauthorized book CLINT: The Life of a Legend, published here in August after a number of years in print in the UK. Reuters item * The Guardian reports that Penguin is looking more appealing to investors as other parts of the Pearson media empire suffer from difficult times: “Penguin, long seen by City investors as a low growth business that plodded along in the background and might even […]

Holiday Schedule I’m honestly not certain what the holiday Lunch schedule will be. I’m away from most of next week, so there will definitely be no regular Lunch next week. There will be a Weekly Lunch to catch up on deals at some point during the week, with timing dependent on my web access and general mood. And there’s bound to be at least some Lunch the following week, but I don’t have a clear plan yet. Of course PublishersMarketplace.com never sleeps-except for today, when the site has indeed overslept. We introduce some new pages late last night and it […]