Penguin’s had a long ride with Eckhart Tolle; now Oprah is finally ready to select another title for her Book Club, to be announced on September 19. The lucky publisher is HarperCollins, and for now, contrary to recent custom, both Amazon and BN.com are showing the new selection as a $25.95 hardcover. One other potentially meaningless clue: the collaborative filtering on Amazon tells me that customers who bought items like this also bought….almost all thrillers (Kathy Reichs; Jeffery Deaver; Tess Gerritsen; Nelson Demille; Robert Crais; James Patterson, etc…–plus an add assortment of Little Golden Books.)Amazon page
Archives for September 2008
Sony UK Stats
The UK launch of the Sony Reader has taken a page from Amazon’s playbook, with excitement over unspecified numbers and demand. Waterstone’s, which has a two-week exclusive on initial sales before the device rolls out among other retailers, has–you guessed it–“sold out” of their initial stock of “the thousands of Readers supplied for launch” (e.g. their initial order.) But there are more on the way: they are “working with Sony to ensure regular deliveries of stock to stores – no one will have to wait very long to get their Reader.” Commercial director Neil Jewsbury tells the Bookseller “we’ve also […]
Film Before Book: An Unusual Take
It’s a long story but here’s the gist: Author Scott Campbell’s book was adapted for film by Oscar-winning German director Caroline Link and debuted at the Toronto Film Festival as “Im Winter ein Jahr” (A Year Ago in Winter)” but the manuscript–finished in 2004–never found a publisher. The Boston Globe says “when the film, which is still seeking American distribution, was over, the audience enthusiastically applauded.” Campbell “wrote it after a friend of his, a painter, told him about his experience doing a portrait for a family whose son had died suddenly. They wanted him to put the surviving daughter […]
Roth TV
Philip Roth rarely appears before cameras or in stores to promote his work but on Tuesday when INDIGNATION is published, “fifty bookstores will show a live, closed-circuit interview between Roth and novelist and essayist Benjamin Taylor. Some are using larger venues, including the Chicago Public Library and Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA,” USA Today report. Houghton has a pdf of stores posted here.
Muted Prospects for Bestseller in Translation
“No. 1 French bestseller” does not necessarily guarantee a novel sales, or even publication, in English-speaking parts of the world, as the Guardian notes: “Fiction in translation is not an easy sell to us Brits, and French fiction is perhaps the hardest sell of all.” The subject is small UK press Gallic Books’ release of Muriel Barbery’s THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG. (It’s published by Europa Editions in the US.) “Barbery’s novel, which takes as its unprepossessing subject an ugly, plump concierge and a 12-year-old girl who plans to commit suicide on her 13th birthday, has spent 102 weeks on […]
People
Words without Borders has appointed Joshua Mandelbaum as managing director. He has been ad director at Poets & Writers Magazine since 2004. Rohan Kamicheril, a WWB volunteer since 2006, has been appointed editor. He continues to work full time in the sales department at Penguin. Tim Sullivan has joined Basic Books as executive editor, focusing on economics, business, politics, and sociology. He spent six months at Portfolio (where his acquisitions included Mike Huckabee’s memoir Do The Right Thing) after working at the Princeton University Press from 2000 to 2008. Taunton Press has promoted Allison Hollett to the newly created position […]