Following Page Six’s insinuation connecting Suge Knight’s shooting with his long-in-gestation book, we can confirm the manuscript is alive and well. Harper director of publicity Shelby Meizlik confirms to PL that the book, now tentatively titled YOUR PAIN IS MY JOY: 100 Rounds with Suge Knight, is scheduled for publication by their Dey Street imprint in summer 2015, with Carrie Thornton editing. Neil Strauss, who collaborated with Marilyn Manson, Dave Navarro and Jenna Jameson on their books, is co-authoring the book. Originally sold to Riverhead back in 2002, the project was resold to HarperCollins last year with Riverhead recouping first proceeds. In […]
Archives for August 2014
The Super Seuss Business
The Wall Street Journal writes in-depth on the Dr. Seuss franchise, so much a staple of Penguin Random House that it was cited a number of times in the company’s financial report earlier on Friday. The peg is the September 9 publication of a second collection of “lost” magazine work, Horton and the Kwuggerbug and More Lost Stories, following on an earlier 2011 collection that hit No. 1 on the NYT bestseller list. As a result Random House Children’s announced a first printing of 250,000 copies. The publisher said they have sold 600 million copies of Dr. Seuss books in 17 […]
Briefs: September Costco Pick; Amis Breaks with German, French Publishers; Maze Runner Movie
The September Pennie’s Pick at Costco is The Monogram Murders: The New Hercule Poirot Mystery, by Sophie Hannah. The Guardian reported that two of Martin Amis‘s longstanding international publishers — Hanser in Germany, and Gallimard in France — declined to publish his newest novel, The Zone of Interest, set in a fictionalized Auschwitz. Another German publisher has not been secured yet, but Calmann-Levy will publish the book in France in 2015. Editor Deborah Kaufmann says she is “delighted to be starting a long relationship with Martin Amis.” The Guardian notes, “He said that it was his understanding that Gallimard’s rejection was due to […]
Penguin Random House Has Softer Sales (Probably) and Strong Earnings In First Half
Penguin Random House plus the separately-owned Random House Germany together had sales in the first half of 2014 of €1.461 billion, with operating EBITDA of €159 million. (The Santillana trade publishing business was added July 1, after the close of these results.) It is the first time that the combined business has reported sales for the first six months of the year, and while the company did not disclose direct comps to prior performance, sales look to be down by about €40 million, or 2.7 percent, likely from the Random House side (which had Dan Brown’s Inferno in 2013, and […]
A Tepid Second Quarter for Books-A-Million
Books-A-Million said sales for the second quarter ending August 2 more or less stayed flat, dipping 0.5 percent to $108.3 million. Same-store sales inched up a mere 0.1 percent, while their net loss of $3 million, or 21 cents per share was a considerable improvement on the $9.1 million net loss of a year ago. The quarterly results also include “higher income tax expense due to the recording of a non-cash valuation allowance and the reversal of previously recorded income tax benefits.” President and ceo Terrance Finley said in the release: “In our BAM! retail stores, the continued improvement in […]
Fall Books
New York Magazine’s list of 57 Books to Read This Fall (from this week’s issue) is online now, joining recent “fall preview” lists and stories from the AP, Huffington Post (they picked 27), and Flavorwire’s 25 Must Read Books for fall. Bigger still, as noted previously, are our own new monthly lists of notable forthcoming releases. Next week alone is a big one for new books, featuring 19 novels of note plus Oprah Winfrey and Randall Munroe’s What If? in nonfiction. Our September preview list has 67 novels, 42 works of nonfiction, and 26 books for kids and young adults — each […]