Publishers Weekly
December 5, 2012
OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network and O, The Oprah Magazine announce the newest Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 selection, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis (Knopf). In her extraordinary debut, Mathis tells the story of the children of the Great Migration through the trials of one indomitable heroine (Hattie) and her unforgettable family. The novel has earned starred pre-publication reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus and Booklist. “The opening pages of Ayana’s debut took my breath away,” said Winfrey, OWN CEO, “I can’t remember when I read anything that moved me in quite this way, besides the work of Toni Morrison.”
October 26, 2012
Numbers show that the publishing industry is handling the rise of e-readers better than what folk knowledge might suggest.
The fall publishing season is in full swing. There can hardly have been a year with more luminaries atop both the fiction and nonfiction bestseller lists; J. K. Rowling, Michael Chabon, Ken Follett, Junot Diaz, among others, represent literary acclaim and commercial appeal. Diaz is having an especially good run. Stephen Colbert, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Young, Bob Woodward, and Salman Rushdie are just a sampling of the nonfiction bestsellers.
October 25, 2012
Last week we carried a story about a claim that Random House was going to let libraries “own” its e-books. However, it turns out that “own” may have been an optimistic oversimplification. Peter Brantley, Director of the Bookserver Project at the Internet Archive, writes at Publishers Weekly that he’s had some follow-up discussion with Skip Dye, Random House’s VP of Library and Academic Sales, to get clarification on exactly what “own” meant in that context. (Found via TechDirt.)
October 10, 2012
Around 7,300 exhibitors from 100 countries are expected to attend this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair. The leading international trade fair for books, media and digital content reveals an industry that is redefining itself in the midst of the most comprehensive paradigm shift since the introduction of the printing press.
October 2, 2012
Yesterday, shoppers discovered that Barnes & Noble is carrying books from Amazon Publishing’s New York imprint in stores around the country, despite the company’s insistence that it wouldn’t do so.
Following our story’s publication yesterday, I learned that Barnes & Noble headquarters sent an email to its branches around the country telling them to pull the Amazon titles. This morning, a Barnes & Noble spokeswoman told me, “Our policy has not changed. We are not carrying Amazon titles.”
September 13, 2012
9/12/2012, (MADISON, CT and NEW YORK, NY) – On September 29, R.J. Julia Booksellers will host an event to launch the Espresso Book Machine (EBM) in their bookstore.
August 7, 2012
“Beth Kephart doesn’t sleep much.”
This is how a recent article about author Beth Kephart in her college alumni magazine, The Pennsylvania Gazette, opened. In fact, this is something pretty much everyone who has ever spent time with Beth Kephart, or heard her give a talk or lead a writing workshop says about her. We say this to make ourselves feel better, to justify why we are not as productive as this prolific and talented writer. In the last 14 years of nearly sleepless nights, in addition to raising a son, maintaining a happy marriage, dancing, exercising and doing the mundane activities of life, Kephart has written and published 14 books, with three more coming out in the next 18 months.
July 11, 2012
From the million-plus dollars raised for a graphic novel about stick figures to an all-female anthology showcasing the works of women in comics, the crowdfunding website Kickstarter has become one of the biggest graphic novel publishers in the US.
Research by US book industry magazine Publishers Weekly puts Kickstarter – which is set to launch in the UK later this year – in fourth place in a ranking of the US's top five graphic novel publishers over the three-month period from February to April.
July 5, 2012
Back by popular demand as part of the annual ALA Virtual Conference (July 18 and 19, 2012), Booklist editors Brad Hooper and Donna Seaman will host 30-minute author lunches, interviewing popular and thought-provoking authors Katherine Boo and Christian Kiefer.
June 6, 2012
Publishers Weekly (PW) magazine and Aptara announce that initial results from the 4th Annual eBook Survey of Publishers, conducted in April, reveal a 100% year-over-year increase in the number of publishers making greater than 10% of their annual revenues from eBooks (36% of eBook publishers surveyed as compared to 18% in 2011).
