The FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year award was presented in London to Brad Stone for THE EVERYTHING STORE. Goldman ceo Lloyd Blankfein commented:”Amazon is a remarkable force that has revolutionized the retail world since Jeff Bezos founded the company almost two decades ago. Brad Stone offers a provocative take on how Jeff Bezos and Amazon have transformed industries as varied as publishing, consumer electronics, and cloud computing.” It’s National Book Awards week in New York, and many of the events will be streamed or broadcast this year. Tonight the finalists in all four categories read from their works […]
Archives for November 2013
The Next Book About Publishing
New York Magazine shares some short anecdotes from Dan Menaker’s forthcoming book MY MISTAKE, which releases tomorrow. “Financial success in frontlist publishing is very often random, but the media conglomerates that run most publishing houses act as if it were not…. Let’s say you publish a fluky blockbuster one year, the corporation will see a spike in your profits and sort of autistically, or at least automatically, raise the profit goal for your division by some corporately predetermined amount for the following year. This is close to clinically insane institutional behavior.” Also: “I think it’s impossible to do an editor-in-chief’s […]
Passings: Lessing, Park, Rubin and Weaver
The world of letters lost a number of prominent voices in recent days: Winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize for literature Doris Lessing 94, died at home in London on Sunday. Her 1962 book The Golden Notebook remains her best-known work, and her editor Nicholas Pearson at Harper UK tells the NYT it was a handbook for an entire generation. The NYT adds: “The 1962 book was daring in its day for its frank exploration of the inner lives of women who, unencumbered by marriage, were free to raise children, or not, and pursue work and their sex lives as they chose.” Author of the Junie B. […]
People, Etc.
At Penguin Random House, Nihar Malaviya has been promoted to evp, deputy chief operating officer, reporting to Madeline McIntosh. He will continue with his existing duties overseeing strategic planning, analytics, and program development, while also adding direct oversight for the company’s combined corporate technology teams and for the Random House operations teams. McIntosh writes in the internal announcement : “Over the past few years, Nihar’s mandate has been to apply his uniquely powerful gifts for strategic planning to the task of expanding our competitive advantages in the evolving marketplace. The direct results of his leadership are seen in the Random […]
Bookstores in the News: Dutton’s, Another BN Closing, Strand Controversy
Billionaire developer (and associate of Warren Buffett) Charlie Munger has been trying to redevelop the space where Dutton’s Books resides in Brentwood, CA at least since 2007. But apparently the current version of that plan has been dropped and the 1951 building which houses the bookstore is spared again, for now. But you can add another Barnes & Noble closing to our list from last week. After unsuccessful lease negotiations, the chain will close their store at Sycamore Plaza store in Kenwood, OH just outside of Cincinnati. It is the seventh known end-of-year closing for BN. On the uglier side, […]
LJ’s Top 10; Guardian First Book; O Magazine Favorite Reads
Library Journal has selected their top 10 books of 2013. (Four of those ten titles were first previewed early in the year prior to publication in our newly-added spring/summer “Winter Institute” edition of our free Publishers Lunch Buzz Books ebook samplers. We’re putting together the new version of that WI-timed sampler right now for release next January–and you can still download and share the big fall/winter edition, which included an additional title on the LJ list.) Claire of the Sea Light, Edwidge Danticat The Panopticon, Jenni Fagan NOS4A2, Joe Hill A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, Anthony Marra Bleeding Edge, Thomas […]