Judith Regan CEO
I haven’t seen much about Regan in the news since that debacle with the O.J. Simpson book she tried to get pubbed a few years ago, a book for which she was eventually fired. But she’s back in the headlines and she’s just been named CEO of a new division at Phaidon called “Regan Arts.”
Regan, who has a reputation as a publisher of highly commercial work, was infamously fired in 2006 from her job overseeing an eponymous imprint at HarperCollins, Regan Books, over conflicts with Rupert Murdoch and then HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman after Regan acquired the O.J. Simpson book, If I Did It. Regan’s past hits run the gamut from lauded literary fiction by authors like Wally Lamb to books by celebrities and pop culture fixtures, such as the burlesque dancer, Dita Von Teese, and the talk show host, Howard Stern.
I’ve always found her drive refreshing and I think we need more like her in publishing. You can read more here.
Independent Booksellers Lose
A federal judge, Jed Rakoff, recently dismissed a case with a lawsuit filed by independent booksellers targeting Amazon and the biggest publishers. Judge Rakoff saw no supporting evidence or viable motive to continue. So he tossed it.
“The evasiveness of this allegation is remarkable,” Rakoff wrote in dismissing the booksellers’ claim. “Plaintiffs do not allege an unlawful agreement, only vague ‘oral discussions or agreements regarding the use of restrictive DRM.’ Plaintiffs do not even allege that any such discussions or agreements actually occurred, only that they may have occurred. And plaintiffs do not specify who participated in these hypothetical discussions or agreements, only that they may have involved ‘one or more’ of the Publishers and Amazon.”
You can read more here. The allegation is interesting.
App For Kids
Oxford University has a new App for kids that’s supposed to help them with spelling. It’s interesting because in a way it shows how even the youngest children are going digital instead of print…in spite of all the reports we often hear.
The app features a parrot named Pip who does somersaults when the player correctly places a letter. When the word is misspelled, he squawks and loses a feather. Pip serves as a kind of guide through a jungle of letters and spelling games. The app has more than 3,000 words, all of which were taken from the Oxford’s First Dictionary. The app is Oxford University Press’ first children’s dictionary app.
My prediction is this is the first of many to come, and we’ll see kids reading and learning even more digitally. You can read more here.