Flatiron Books will publish Oprah Winfrey’s forthcoming memoir THE LIFE YOU WANT in January 2017, the lead title in Winfrey’s as-yet-unnamed book imprint, expected to include several non-fiction titles per year chosen personally by Oprah. The book, which will be published simultaneously by Pan Macmillan in the UK, Australia, South Africa and India, promises to reveal “never-before told stories from her own experience and shines a light on how anyone can put their life on a new trajectory.” Winfrey said in the announcement: “All of my experiences, even the painful ones, have been there to teach me something about life. […]
Archives for December 2015
Penguin Random House Consolidates Library eBook Terms
With Penguin Random House unifying its adult library marketing teams under the leadership of vp, library sales Skip Dye, the company will also simplify its terms of sale for ebooks into school and public libraries in the US and Canada as of January 1, 2016. The Random House model will prevail companywide over the Penguin practice, and going forward all titles will be sold to libraries in perpetuity — at premium library prices — rather than sold for a term of one year, as has been the Penguin policy. (Titles are still limited to one patron at a time for each ebook […]
The Best Books of 2015 — From the NYT, and Overall
The NYT Book Review announced their top 10 books of the year, a mix of critics’ favorites (Ferrante and Coates) and less expected outliers (Szabo and Seierstad): Fiction The Door, by Magda Szabo (translated by Len Rix) A Manual for Cleaning Women, by Lucia Berlin Outline, by Rachel Cusk The Sellout, by Paul Beatty The Story of the Lost Child, by Elena Ferrante (translated by Ann Goldstein) Nonfiction Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates Empire of Cotton, by Sven Beckert H Is for Hawk, by Helen Macdonald The Invention of Nature, by Andrea Wulf One of Us: The […]
Barnes & Noble, ABA, and Authors Guild File Brief Asking Supreme Court to Hear Apple’s Appeal
Barnes & Noble and the American Booksellers Association joined with the Authors Guild and Authors United in a friend of the court brief asking the Supreme Court to hear Apple’s appeal of the ebook pricing case. Consistent with Apple’s own brief, the parties assert that the Second Circuit should have used the rule of reason to evaluate Apple’s conduct in launching the iBooks Store rather than judging it per se unlawful. And they assert that under a rule of reason, the market for ebooks became more competitive: “Following Apple’s entry into the market and the adoption of the agency model, competition within the […]
People: Helen Brann Dies, and More
Literary agent Helen Wetmore Brann, 82, died suddenly on Monday of complications from cancer. In July, Brann “entered into a success plan” with ICM. She started her agency in 1974 — among the first women to open her own agency — after working at the Sterling Lord Agency. Over her career she had represented writers including Julian Barnes, Richard Brautigan, Gerald Clarke, Daniel Yergin, Rod McKuen, Barbara Leaming, Stephen Sondheim, Robert B. Parker and Maya Angelou. A private service will be held at a later date. Donations in her memory can be made to the Palliative Care Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. In other personnel news, Rachel […]
Robert Hale Ltd Closes After Nearly 80 Years
UK publisher Robert Hale Ltd will shut down after almost 80 years in business, the Bookseller reports, leading to the immediate loss of 10 jobs, with 4 more set for elimination next year. The company’s lists and imprints, including NAG Press, J A Allen and Buried River Press, have been bought by The Crowood Press. Chairman John Hale “intends to retire and realize the family’s assets next spring.” The publisher is no longer active as of December 1, but will continue some operations as it calculates remaining royalties and winds down. “It is a sad time, but we are delighted that our […]