Chronicle Books food and drink editorial director Bill LeBlond will retire on November 7 after 33 years with the company. Company president Jack Jensen says, “Bill has made a pivotal contribution to the ongoing success of Chronicle Books. I speak for many existing authors and colleagues, as well as probably hundreds who have come and gone over the years when I say Bill will be greatly missed.” Alex Littlefield has been promoted to senior editor at Basic Books, which he joined in March 2010. Pulitzer Prize winner for the novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love Oscar Hijuelos, 62, […]
Archives for October 2013
Attendance Slides At the Still-Giant Frankfurt Book Fair
The Frankfurt Book Fair is a mammoth show by any measure, though by the organizer’s own numbers trade visits continue to decline modestly year over year. FBF officials say that 142,921 people were present during the first three trade show days, and a total of 275,342 visitors were logged over all five days (with the German public attending the final two days). Both counts are slightly below last year’s numbers, and the fair’s attendance peaked in 2008 — with just under 300,000 total visitors, and a claim of 186,240 trade visitors for the entire fair. It’s a little confusing lining […]
Tonight’s Booker
The Booker Prize will be awarded this evening in London. Jim Crace’s HARVEST has been the bettors’ favorite from the start and remains so today, albeit by a small margin. Based on historical trends, that makes it highly likely Crace will not actually win, since except for Hilary Mantel, the Booker “favorite” almost always loses. Eleanor Catton’s 848-page The Luminaries is a close second in the betting, and is finally on sale in the US today. There’s some question as to how much is actually wagered on the prize, though. The Telegraph says that “a mere £24” has been bet on […]
Self-Publishing Takes Down WH Smith
On Saturday the UK’s Mail on Sunday ran a sensational article focusing on the “disturbingly graphic content” available in abundance through major online bookstores, including WH Smith, Amazon, Waterstones and Barnes & Noble, generally as ebooks. The prime focus of their piece was WH Smith, where children’s ebooks and pornography were freely mixed under the first page of results for a search for “daddy.” (The story appears to have begun with a tweet during the week and an article in The Kernel that focused on Amazon.) In response, WH Smith took their entire website offline, and it remains still closed […]
Over Government Objections, ATF Whistleblower Book Set for December
ATF agent and whistleblower John Dodson was in the news earlier this week because of moves by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to delay or block entirely his book, THE UNARMED TRUTH: My Fight to Blow the Whistle and Expose Fast and Furious — and support registered for Dodson from the ACLU. But on Friday, Threshold Editions officially announced the title for publication, and moved up planned publication from the January 14, 2014 date currently listed on bookselling sites to December 3. The book is billed as “a hard-hitting account that offers, for the first time, the inside story […]
People, Awards, Etc.: Munro, Charkin, Levinson, Potter Postage, and More
Vintage is reprinting a total of 100,000 copies across their backlist of 14 story collections by Nobel laureate Alice Munro. Random House Canada ceo Brad Martin told the Globe and Mail, “As far as we know, we have stock of all of Alice’s active titles,” though booksellers were light on copies and ran out quickly. Indigo placed “nice, substantial orders” for fresh inventory. You can read (or hear) Munro’s short phone call interview with the prize organizers here. She said in a written statement Thursday: “This is so surprising and wonderful. I am dazed by all the attention and affection that has […]