The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded on Thursday to the French author Patrick Modiano. In their citation, the prize judges commended Modiano “for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation.” As with the most recent French Nobel laureate, J.M.G. Le Clezio in 2008, few of Modiano’s more than 30 novels have been translated into English. The most recent translation was DORA BRUDER/THE SEARCH WARRANT, published in the US by the University of California Press (1999) and in the UK by Harvill Secker (2000). But Yale University Press is scheduled to […]
Archives for October 2014
People: Rasenberger to Run Authors Guild
The Authors Guild has hired Mary Rasenberger to succeed Paul Aiken as executive director, on November 3. Currently a partner at the media law firm Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams and Sheppard, she recently was director of the Library of Congress’s National Digital Preservation Program from 2006 to 2008 and prior to that spend 4 years at the Copyright Office as policy planning advisor and then senior advisor for public policy. Aiken, who announced a year ago that he has ALS, will work for the Guild as a consultant for the next two years. Guild president Roxana Robinson says in the announcement: […]
Growth Moderates for ISBN-Carrying Self-Published Books
Bowker has issued a new six-year overview of self-publishing output, prepared in conjunction with their sister company Proquest. While the report provides more robust counts of self-published books annually than the numbers found in Bowker’s regularly, yearly looks at newly published books, there is still one big flaw in using the data to draw sweeping conclusions. Bowker declares: “While self-publishing is alive and well and still showing very healthy growth rates, gone are the days of 60% growth year over year. As the charts in this report show, self-publishing has matured and slowed down to a steadier, less frantic pace.” […]
Strong Final Week Puts Pre-Frankfurt Dealmaking Up 12 Percent
With a very strong week of deal reports, our updated counts of pre-Frankfurt dealmaking activity now show 2014 surpassing what was a strong 2013 by a good margin. For October 1 through October 7 we logged 192 US deals, compared to 118 in the same period a year ago. So our totals which were up less than 2 percent for the month of September now have domestic deal report up almost 12 percent for September 1 through October 7, with 795 transactions (compared to 711 a year ago). Children’s and YA sales continued to show the biggest increase year over […]
Briefs: Bloomsbury Considered Possible Osprey Buyer; Canongate 2013 Results; and More
On the heels of the Osprey Group selling off Angry Robot, Watkins, and Nourish earlier this month to entrepreneur Etan Ilfeld, the remaining divisions are still potentially up for sale, with Bloomsbury considered to be the most likely buyer, the Bookseller reports. They say the current speculation is that “both Bloomsbury and Hachette were in the running to acquire [Osprey]” but that Bloomsbury is the front-runner. That said, “neither Bloomsbury, Sullivan, Osprey chairman Robin Black nor Alcuin Capital would respond to requests for details of the sale.” Canongate reported strong results for 2013, with full-year sales at £10.4 million, up 7.8 percent […]
Harper Germany to Launch In 2015; Will Publish Silva In 16 Territories
HarperCollins is creating a HarperCollins Germany publishing program, expanding on the operation in Hamburg acquired as part of their purchase of Harlequin and launching in fall 2015 with approximately 50 Harper branded titles. The German initiative is itself just a first step, as Harper plans to take those 50 titles and others to in Japan, Sweden, Holland and Spain “in the coming months,” with more territories also in process. “In the markets where we own 100 percent of the [Harlequin] companies we’ll go very quickly,” says ceo Brian Murray. The Harlequin units operate as joint ventures in France, Italy and Brazil, where “there’s […]