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Literary MagNet chronicles the start-ups and closures, successes and failures, anniversaries and accolades, changes of editorship and special issues—in short, the news and trends—of literary magazines in America. This issue's MagNet features Cave Wall, 6x6, Big Fiction, the Paris Review, and the New England Review.
The Association of American Publishers reports sales rose over 13 percent for the first half of 2012; Robert Atwan lists the ten best essays written since 1950; literary podcast Other People with Brad Listi has created an app; and other news.
Three debut authors compare notes about everything from working with an editor to choosing a cover.
Librarians revolt against HarperCollins after its decision to limit the number of times a digital copy of an e-book can be checked out and returned.
Gabriel Cohen, coordinator of Sundays at Sunny’s, one of New York City’s longest-running literary reading series, talks with John B. Thompson, author of Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century, who demystifies the complexity of the book-publishing industry in the United States and in the United Kingdom.
In the first major overseas legal challenge to its massive book-scanning project, Google’s French division was hit last week with a copyright infringement lawsuit. Publishing group La Martinière, backed by the editors association Syndicat national de l’édition (SNE) and the writers union Société des gens de lettres (SGDL), is asking a Paris court to force the Internet giant to halt its digitization of protected works and to levy a fine of eighteen million euros (about $26 million) as well as a per diem fine of one hundred thousand euros ($146,000).
About a week shy of its first anniversary, online magazine the Daily Beast is getting into the book business. On Monday, editor Tina Brown announced a joint venture with Perseus Books to release a series of short, topical e-books quickly followed by paperback editions. The new imprint, Beast Books, plans to publish three to five titles in the next year.
Steve Rubin, best known as the publisher of John Grisham and Dan Brown, announced yesterday that he is stepping down as executive vice president and publisher-at-large of Random House, effective next Friday. The sixty-seven-year-old Rubin, a former journalist, said he was moving on to pursue other opportunities, including a book deal of his own with “one of the finest publishers in the industry.”
Another wave of layoffs hit Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) last week, with the publisher confirming plans to eliminate sixty-five jobs at its offices in Boston and Orlando. The decision follows a deal signed in July with global outsourcing firm Cognizant Technology Solutions, which will see a portion of HMH’s information technology services transferred overseas.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced yesterday that Bruce Nichols has been appointed senior vice president and publisher of adult trade and reference, filling a position left vacant since Rebecca Saletan resigned last December.
