PW’s Week Ahead 05.11.12

May 11, 2012 | News

Authors’ representatives – otherwise known as literary agents – have done some writing on their own this week. In a missive to the US Department of Justice, the board of the Association of Authors’ Representatives (AAR) conveyed “in the strongest terms possible” its...

PW’s Week Ahead 05.04.12

May 4, 2012 | News

The parties returned to Judge Denny Chin’s Manhattan courtroom yesterday for motions in the Google Books Case. The search engine giant sought to remove the Authors Guild as an associational plaintiff, even as the Guild pushed for its own motion to certify the class of...

PW’s Week Ahead 04.27.12

Apr 27, 2012 | News

A major publisher moves to kill DRM (Digital Rights Management). It’s more good news for e-book consumers, but in corners of the publishing industry, fears persist. Will holding on save the business? — or sink it? “Tor Books, the venerable sci-fi...

BTB #292: Rescue Newspapers, Save Democracy

Apr 22, 2012 | News

In early April, local businessmen acquired the Philadelphia Inquirer and related media properties for $55 million. Led by Lewis Katz and George E. Norcross III, the investors purchased Philadelphia Media Network (PMN) for a fraction of the $515 million paid in 2006 by...

PW’s Week Ahead 04.20.12

Apr 20, 2012 | News

O to be in England, now that April’s there. And in 2012, in London, the scene is not nearly as idyllic as in Browning’s verse: The great metropolis is in the final throes of preparation for Olympic game and royal jubilee festivals. It has not gone without notice,...

PW’s Week Ahead 04.13.12

Apr 13, 2012 | News

“Baffling.” That’s the take from the CEO of the American Booksellers Association. “A big win” says Amazon, speaking not for the e-tailer but – it says – for Kindle owners. “An intrusion into the business sector by the federal government in a manner that is designed to...

PW’s Week Ahead 04.06.12

Apr 6, 2012 | News

Surveys and polls are in the news – not on the presidential campaign, but on the rise of e-books in the US and the rest of the world. The French and the Japanese have something in common, it turns out, while in Brazil and India – two of the so-called BRICS group of...

PW’s Week Ahead 03.30.12

Mar 30, 2012 | News

Magic wand and e-reader in hand, Harry Potter returned to the spotlight on the publishing industry stage this week. Pottermore, the official digital home of the seven-novel series from J.K. Rowling launched this week. In the days ahead, when talk turns to evil-doing,...

PW’s Week Ahead 03.23.12

Mar 23, 2012 | News

There will always be books, if only because Hollywood would die without them as sources for scripts. As The Hunger Games takes aim this weekend at movie audiences, agents and producers who are doing lunch in Lalaland should know that paranormal romances and dystopic...

BTB #285: News from Digital Book World

Mar 18, 2012 | Copyright, Digital Transformation, News

Like the clans gathering for the St. Patrick’s Day parade, the houses came together in New York on March 13 for the annual meeting of the Association of American Publishers. The audience at the McGraw-Hill auditorium on Sixth Avenue heard the book business’s near-term...