The New York Times’ daily critics Michiko Kakutani, Janet Maslin, and Dwight Garner each chose their 10 favorite books of 2014. As usual, there is little intersection between these 30 titles and the NYT Book Review’s official “10 Best” list. Also as is often the case, Kakutani picks are the most aligned with that 10 Best: She concurs on Klay, Chast, and Kolbert (and Garner is in sync on Lee): Kakutani Redeployment, Phil Klay Little Failure, Gary Shteyngart A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Roz Chast Duty, Robert M. Gates The […]
Archives for December 2014
School Book Clubs Help Lift Second Quarter Sales At Scholastic
Scholastic reported second quarter sales of $666 million, up 7 percent (or $43 million) from a year ago, “largely driven by strong sales in children’s books, especially in the company’s school-based distribution channels, and continued growth in classroom books and magazines.” All of the growth and more came from the children’s book publishing and distribution division, which rose $50.5 million to $403 million. Trade sales were up $3.1 million to $55.6 million, helped by the Minecraft series. School Book Club sales rose $32.2 million, or 33 percent, to $129.6 million. “Lower investment in Storia” helped children’s book publishing profits. The […]
People
Kara Sargent will join Little, Brown Children’s as executive editorial director, Brand, Licensed, and Media Tie-in Publishing on January 5th. Previously she was editorial director at Simon & Schuster Children’s, overseeing Simon Spotlight. Group director of domestic rights at HarperCollins Bob Spizer will leave the company at the end of January after 31 years. After February 1, he can be reached at robertspizer@yahoo.com. Abrams announced that Jeff Kinney‘s ninth book, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul, has sold more than 2 million units in all formats around the world since going on sale on November 4. Downtown Books in Craig, CO has […]
A Well-Read Editor’s Favorite Books of 2014
As we’re well on our way to anointing the “Best of the Best Books of 2014” (Anthony Doerr and Emily St. John Mandel continue to pull away from the crowd), here is Publishers Lunch news editor Sarah Weinman’s addition to the seasonal recommendations. In her case, these ten favorite fiction and nonfiction books published during 2014 come from a reading pace of a little over one book a day. (With one overlapping exception, she will issue a separate crime fiction list elsewhere later this week.) Fiction Molly Antopol, THE UNAMERICANS (Norton) This debut short story collection is uncommonly worldly, wise, and heartfelt about […]
People: Reich to Retire from PGW
Perseus Books Group ceo David Steinberger announced to employees on Tuesday that president of Publishers Group West Susan Reich plans to retire on March 31 (and will remain in that role until her retirement). Reich was president and COO of Avalon for 10 years before it was acquired by Perseus, and has run PGW for the past 7 years (after working there in the 90s as vp). Reich “has done an exemplary job leading PGW,” Steinberger writes, adding, “She has a well-deserved reputation as a professional of high integrity and excellent judgment who guides PGW with an endearing combination of […]
KDP Fund Nudges Up Again
After growing public disappointment from at least some authors with the effect of the Kindle Unlimited subscription program on the marketplace for self-published books, Amazon provided authors with a slight improvement on the economics for November. They added a “bonus” of $3.5 million to fund that self-published authors share, for a total of $6.5 million for the month (on approximately 4.68 million borrows). That makes the payment for each “borrow” $1.39, up 6 cents from October — when the $1.33 payout was the lowest since the more limited KOLL initiative began back in 2011. Those October fees remain below the $1.52 per borrow for […]