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weekly round-up: The authors guild

Our round-up of key news affecting authors. In this week’s edition: Publishers experiment with Netflix tie-ins, you cannot be well-read without reading women, and more…

Accountant embezzled $3.4M from famed literary agency
The New York Post
An accountant at Donadio & Olson, a literary agency that represents top writers, including Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk, is accused of stealing millions in author royalties and advances and leaving the company on the brink of bankruptcy.

BookExpo 2018: B&N Boss Says More Bookstores the Better
Publishers Weekly

“Len Riggio, chairman of Barnes & Noble, Inc., opened BookExpo 2018 with a speech lauding the work of booksellers and their role as catalysts for social change, as well as extending a peace laurel to the independent bookselling community and warning that booksellers need to remain nimble in the face of change.”

Knight Institute, ACLU Sue for More Transparent Manuscript Review Process for Government Agencies
Publishers Weekly
Knight Institute and the ACLU filed suit in federal court seeking more transparency about the government’s pre-publication book review processes. The suit claims that the lack of publicly available information regarding pre-publication review policies raises serious questions about the First Amendment rights of both the authors and the public.

Amazon Has Three More Bookstores Set to Open
Forbes
Two more locations of Amazon Books are scheduled to open this year, with a third in the works. The three stores will be located in the Bethesda Row district (Maryland), Pacific Palisades (California), and Lone Tree (Colorado). This will bring the total number of Amazon Books locations to eighteen.

Publishers Experiment with Netflix Tie-Ins, New Formats
Publishers Weekly
Publishers are interested in looking at streaming and other nontraditional sources for licensed tie-ins. Netflix is considered to be a prime example, with publishers assessing the growing number of streaming-only TV series for publishing potential.

Read 20 Famous Authors’ Very First Published Short Stories
LitHub
A collection of twenty famous authors–from Edith Wharton to George Saunders–and their first published stories. Each of the stories are available to read online.

You Cannot Be ‘Well Read’ Without Reading Women
The Guardian
After reading Lauren Groff’s recent New York Times “By the Book” Q&A, in which Groff names only women authors, Guardian contributor Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett discusses the fact that some male readers still avoid female authors.

BookExpo 2018: CEOs See a Stable Book Industry in an Unstable World
Publishers Weekly
In a BookExpo panel moderated by AAP president and CEO Maria Pallante, which featured Macmillan CEO John Sargent, Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy, and Penguin Random House CEO Markus Dohle, Pallante “noted that virtually all categories are up in the first quarter of 2018. And after years of dire predictions for book publishing in the digital age, Pallante asked the CEOs for their take on how the book business is faring.”

At BookExpo, a Look at Copyright Issues: ‘It’s the Author Who Suffers’
Publishing Perspectives
In a BookExpo opening day panel, Association of American Publishers chief Maria Pallante, Authors Guild executive director Mary Rasenberger, Copyright Alliance’s Keith Kupferschmid, and Associated Press’ Hillel Italie discussed the importance of protecting the works of authorship.“Copyright is the sole mechanism, the foundation of the marketplace,” Rasenberger said, by which “authors can monetize their work in a free market. It’s what makes it possible for authors to make a living writing what they want to write instead of writing what an employer wants them to write.”