Simon & Schuster’s Children’s division has partnered with Gotham Group, a Los Angeles-based management firm, to develop book properties for film, starting with Alienated, director David O. Russell’s upcoming middle-grade book series. “It’s about having more control in the process,” Rick Richter, president and publisher of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, told the New York Times. The Times offers a painstakingly clueless account of how this might aid S&S, with no sense of other film partnerships struck by other big six houses recently.NYT
B&N Won't Bid for Borders
It’s kind of funny, actually: Now the WSJ reports what we’ve been saying all along: that Barnes & Noble is not expected to bid for Borders, citing in part “the tight lending markets that likely would make it difficult to arrange bank financing” and high-lease prices on some of Borders’ stores. It was the Journal touting BN’s head fake in May that “it had assembled a team of senior executives and advisers to study the possibility of acquiring Borders” that gave Borders stock a pop even as the stronger Barnes & Noble has declined during the summer sell-off. (Both stocks […]
Esquire Editor L. Rust Hills Dies
Esquire’s longtime fiction editor, working three separate stints during the 1950s through the 1990s and publisher of contemporary work by the likes of John Cheever, Norman Mailer, William Styron, and Raymond Carter, died Tuesday at his home in Belfast, ME. He was 83. NYT obit
Chinese Print Costs Hit Publishers Hard
Print costs in China have reached “unprecedented” levels, reports the Bookseller, raising concerns that new titles could be delayed or cancelled. UK novelty, gift and illustrated publishers are the hardest hit as the combination of paper and oil price rises, new labour laws and fluctuations in the US dollar and RMB–which has seen Chinese printing costs surge by up to 40% since the beginning of the year–hit home. Kate Skipper, children’s buyer for ages 0-5 at Waterstone’s, said: “We are seeing prices for novelty titles go up and we think the next year will be significantly different in terms of […]
F+W/Adams Media Accounting Questioned
After author Sherry Argov won a $209,000 arbitration judgment as compensation for withheld royalties and “deceptive accounting practices” on her book Why Men Love Bitches from F+W Publishing, the Authors Guild is now looking into the company’s accounting practices, as well as the admission that there is “no system in place for tracking inbound Royalty Statements from translation rights deals.” PWAG statement
The Pros and Cons of Newsworthy Books
On the one hand, when a book like Ron Suskind’s The Way of the World or Jonathan Mahler’s The Challenge is published with juicy details or inadvertently timed to a breaking story, it gets them a great deal of attention and keeps them in the news cycle. But as the Observer’s Leon Neyfakh discovers, the other hand contains a double-edged sword – one where the meat of the book can get lost underneath a news break’s tidal wave. “Copies may sell, of course. But the seriousness of the project, and the commitment of the undertaking, will be forever eclipsed.“ Take […]