Bookmail

There's a great letter that was posted on the Sydney Morning Herald Entertainment Blog recently from a senior manager at Angus and Robertson to a number of publishers, demanding thousands of dollars in payoff money to continue selling to A&R. It's a fairly staggering request, although rumour has it that this sort of bullying happens all the time in the book industry.

What makes this story even better is that the director of Tower Books also included his response to the letter, and it's a pearler. He tells them to stick their deal in their cornhole, rips right into A&R for their arrogance, and also hammers their excruciatingly poor management, quoting several telling stories about A&R.

There's also an excellent line-by-line analysis of both letters on the blog Making Light that illuminates a few interesting practices in the industry.