Daily book biz round-up: Amazon rips off Kindle users; snogging Salman; and more

Today’s book news:

• Scandal! Amazon charging Kindle users for free Project Gutenberg titles
• Sex! British media personality sues Sunday Times for writing that she “snogged” Salman Rushdie
• Passion! Nabokov’s love letters to be published in English next year
• Madness! “Writers Needed” spam drives Twitter users crazy
• Rednecks! Glenn Beck book event to be simulcast in 537 American movie theatres

Gaspereau sells The Sentimentalists to D&M for shipping on Nov. 19

Early this morning, the Vancouver-based D&M Publishers announced that it had struck a deal with Nova Scotia’s Gaspereau Press for trade paperback rights to Johanna Skibsrud’s Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning The Sentimentalists. From the press release:

Before Scott McIntyre’s head hit the pillow Tuesday night following the Giller gala, he sent a long email to his friend and colleague Andrew Steeves, co-publisher of Gaspereau Press, reporting on the extraordinary evening. McIntyre and Steeves immediately hatched a plan to make Johanna Skibsrud’s debut novel widely available to the Canadian book trade, while still honouring Gaspereau’s craft.

[...]

The first 30,000 copies of the Douglas & McIntyre edition of The Sentimentalists (ISBN 978-1-55365-895-5, $19.95, paperback), printed on high quality FSC eco-paper, will be shipped from the bindery on November 19, less than 10 days after the Giller was awarded. Paper is on hand for an immediate reprint of 20,000 copies. The e-book is already a bestseller on Kobo and Douglas & McIntyre will make it available through other e-book retailers, including the Apple iBookstore, Amazon Kindle, Sony eBook store, eBooks.com and Barnes & Noble’s Nook Store. Gaspereau Press will continue to issue copies of its original edition ($27.95, 978-1-55447-078-5, sewn paperback with letterpress-printed jacket), giving readers a choice of two quality editions of the book.

Gordon Pinsent reads Bieber memoir

From This Hour Has 22 Minutes:

UPDATED: Fenn committed to Key Porter’s fall slate

As H.B. Fenn and Company proceeds with the near total dismantling of subsidiary Key Porter Books, concern continues to mount about the fate of Key Porter’s fall list. According to H.B. Fenn vice-president of marketing Tom Best, all titles scheduled to be released between now and December will be going ahead as planned. “Marketing plans, publicity, and author tours will go forward … and we are bullish about our fall lineup,” says Best.

Agent Chris Bucci, of Anne McDermid & Associates, says that no one from Key Porter or H.B. Fenn was in contact with the agency prior to the news going public, even though McDermid client Christopher Shulgan is launching Superdad: A Memoir of Rebellion, Drugs, and Fatherhood this week. “We’re all waiting to hear exactly how it’s going to play out,” Bucci says. “It’s sad. It’s never good to see a publishing house – especially one that’s been around for a while – go under.” Bucci added that all of the agency’s Key Porter authors – who also include Julia Devaney and Kim Clarke Champniss – have bankruptcy clauses in their contracts.

Agent Beverly Slopen, who counts Key Porter author David Posen among her clients, says she had no advance word of the closure of the Toronto office either, but she’s hoping the impact on the company’s backlist titles will be minimal. “I’m assuming that Key Porter authors … will still be part of [H.B. Fenn and Company’s] distribution catalogue,” she says, adding that it’s hard to watch another Canadian company in crisis. “The options for publishing are shrinking so quickly…. These are very chaotic times, and I just hope we get through [this] retrenchment period.”

Few ex-staffers from Key Porter have been willing to speak about the situation, but former manager of special and corporate sales Paula Sloss says that everyone was in shock when the announcement was made yesterday afternoon. “The way things have been the past couple of months, we were all expecting some form of announcement, but it was surprising that it was so radical,” she says, adding that things have been “very scary” since May. “I’ve been there since 2001. All of a sudden it’s over. You don’t realize how much of who you are is attached to your profession.”

Meanwhile, former publicist Jenna Illies, who had been with the company only for the past few months, says she was “shattered” after the staff meeting. “But I have been through much worse, and I always seem to land on my feet,” she says.

Key Porter editorial staff reduced to one

The news is not looking good for Key Porter Books. In conversation with Q&Q this morning, former Key Porter senior editor Michael Mouland confirmed that 15 11 staffers were laid off late Wednesday afternoon and that only five six employees remain: publisher Jordan Fenn, assistant to the publisher Sheila Douglas-Evely, production manager Stacey Campbell, national account manager Brad Kalbfleisch, publicist Katherine Wilson, and editor-in-chief Linda Pruessen.

“It was very abrupt,” says Mouland. “We were shocked, we just had our spring pre-sales conference the day before, and there was an expectation that everybody was going to move ahead.” According to Mouland, laid-off staffers were informed that the company, which celebrated its 30th birthday last year, will continue operating in a much reduced form. But Mouland says he doesn’t know how the five six remaining staffers will manage such a task. “It’s hard to speculate what’s going to happen. It’s a dark day for Canadian publishing.”

According to a press release sent out by Harold Fenn, owner of Key Porter parent company H.B. Fenn and Company, the Toronto offices of Key Porter will be closed and the remaining staffers will be moved to Fenn headquarters in Bolton, Ontario. “The results,” wrote Fenn, presumably referring to sales at Key Porter, “have been disappointing and substantially less than positive. It’s time to change our direction and direct our changes toward a smaller and more focused operation. The company will focus itself on a smaller list of annual new titles and limit the program to fewer categories in the future.”


September Q&Q: Dany Laferrière and more in the spotlight on Quebec publishing

The cover star of the September issue of Q&Q is the Haitian-born, Montreal-based author Dany Laferrière, who came to national attention in the 1980s with his first novel, How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired, and is set to make a comeback in English-Canada with his latest novel. Also in the issue, Q&Q looks at a Quebec City publishing house that is bringing English-Canadian writing to French readers, and at the Montreal micro-publisher Conundrum Press, which evolved from being a quirky literary house to a quirky publisher of graphic novels. All that plus Fall Announcements, listing every fall adult title, and reviews of Linwood Barclay’s Fear the Worst, Douglas Coupland’s Generation A, Shinan Govani’s Boldface Names, and Arthur Slade’s The Hunchback Assignments.

Returning North

Globe-trotting novelist Dany Laferrière is a big-time celebrity in Quebec. Now, after a decade-long hiatus, he’s being published again in English

Exposing family secrets

Six authors on navigating the personal minefield of memoir writing

The English invasion

An upstart Quebec City house is discovering a surprising demand in its home province for English-Canadian writing. And more in the spotlight on Quebec publishing: The evolution of Conundrum Press, and the dying art of literary translation

Fall Announcements

The season’s complete listings

FRONTMATTER

Bonnie Burnard is back in the spotlight

Don LePan among the Animals

Snapshot: BookNet Canada’s new CEO Noah Genner

Cover to Cover: Lavie Tidhar and Nir Yaniv’s The Tel Aviv Dossier

The e-catalogue cometh

Harry Bruce on the Hugh MacLennan novel that almost never was

Local Buzz: Back to the Beach

GUEST OPINION

Canada’s beleaguered litmags must experiment online to stay relevant, argues Jason McBride

REVIEWS

Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro

Galore by Michael Crummey

The Fallen by Stephen Finucan

Animal by Alexandra Leggat

Plus more fiction, non-fiction, and poetry

BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

Violet by Tania Stehlik and Vanja Vuleta Jovanovic

The Winter Drey by Sean Dixon

The Hunchback Assignments by Arthur Slade

Plus more fiction, non-fiction, and picture books

THE LAST WORD

The ups and downs of Amazon’s sales rankings can drive authors to distraction, writes Linwood Barclay

Anne Michaels and more in the April Q&Q

Thirteen years after the blockbuster success of Fugitive Pieces, Anne Michaels is about to publish her second novel, and she’s Q&Q‘s cover subject in the April 2009 issue, which is available now. Also in April, we look at the some of the ideas for industry networking and sales-generating that have sprung up in the wake of BookExpo Canada’s collapse, and at the Literary Press Group‘s future plans now that new executive director Jack Illingworth is on board. Plus reviews of new books by David Suzuki, Kim Echlin, Trevor Herriot, Robert J. Sawyer, Vlasta van Kampen, Tim Wynne-Jones, and more. The full table of contents is after the jump.
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12 to watch in the new Q&Q

Every five years, Q&Q highlights “Ones to Watch” – rising young stars in the ranks of the book business. This year a dozen up-and-comers made the list, and they are … well, check out the March issue, on sale now. Also in the issue, we look at the tricky task of keeping career momentum alive in Canadian publishing and at second-generation indie booksellers. Plus: closeups of author Kim Echlin and CanLit-loving film director Bruce McDonald; the Spring Announcements; and reviews of new books by Anne Michaels, Paulette Jiles, Kathy Kacer and Sharon McKay, and more. The full table of contents is after the jump.
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