Friday’s Book Expo children’s breakfast began with the presentation of the Women’s National Book Association’s Pannell Awards. The General Bookstore Award went to the Bookworm of Edwards in Edwards, CO, while Children’s Book World in LA won the award for Children’s Specialty Bookstore. Afterwards, Savannah Guthrie hosted the panel featuring Jason Reynolds, Marieke Nijkamp, Jennifer Weiner, and Isla Fisher. Fisher, author of picture book Marge in Charge (Harper Children’s, 10/3), said that she’s worried “that books are dying for our kids,” with the prevalence of technology and mobile devices. Politics were off limits — Guthrie stopped Weiner from making a Trump […]
Archives for June 2017
People, Etc.
Heide Kloth will join Harper Germany as executive editor as of July 1, reporting to Claudia Wuttke. Previously, she was senior editor for Ullstein. Awards The Audio Publishers Association presented their annual Audie Awards across multiple categories, with audiobook of the year honors going to the audio version of HAMILTON: The Revolution, by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter, narrated by Mariska Hargitay, with the authors, published by Hachette Audio. Initiatives A group of publishers including HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and National Geographic Kids are collaborating with YouTube Kids on a June initiative called #ReadAlong month. The program will feature an HMH-created […]
Hillary Clinton on Her Memoir, the Resistance, and More
Hillary Clinton appeared at Book Expo on Thursday evening to promote her memoir forthcoming with Simon & Schuster in September, and the surprise reveal was that she was interviewed by author Cheryl Strayed. (The audience of booksellers and others oohed when S&S cep Carolyn Reidy introduced her.) The book is an “emotional catharsis” structured around inspirational quotes that have helped Clinton through particularly difficult times. After a headline-making appearance at the Recode conference in California the day before in which Clinton criticized the Democratic National Committee, the tone of the Book Expo interview was mostly light and inspirational. Strayed and Clinton joked about […]
ABA Celebrates Positive Trends, Improving Backlist Terms
ABA ceo Oren Teicher addressed the organization’s members at their annual meeting on Thursday afternoon, held as part of Book Expo, as usual framed optimistically but with some cautionary notes in the midst of “a retail landscape that is, to say the least, turbulent.” In addition to the membership numbers reported earlier this week, which ended seven years of growth in ABA members but saw more total member locations, Teicher noted that 87 new ABA member bookstores in 2016, and 15 member stores were purchased by new owners. “For many years,” he noted, “this sort of successful succession of the business was not […]
Booksellers and Politics at the Book Expo Author Breakfast
Book Expo’s opening Adult Book and Author breakfast was well-attended as usual, with Stephen and Owen King, co-authors of Sleeping Beauties (Scribner, 9/26), kicking things off. Also presenting new titles were moderator Whitney Cummings, Claire Messud, Scott Kelly, Pete Souza, and Jesmyn Ward. The importance of booksellers was at the forefront of many of the speeches. Astronaut Scott Kelly, who broke records by spending a whole year in space, spoke about discovering Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff in a book store as a college freshman. Jesmyn Ward likewise celebrated booksellers, highlighting the independent book stores at the center of her […]
Corporate: Ingram Pairs with Optiqly; BISG On Rights
Marketing technology and services startup Optiqly — still in private beta and launching shortly — will provide a version of their tools through Ingram’s CoreSource as a subscription service, adapted to focus on servicing the company’s distribution clients. The deal provides Ingram an exclusive among a limited set of large distributors and wholesalers. Ingram Content Group Ventures was the investor in Optiqly’s first seed funding, and they are leading the second seed funding round, underway now. Director of data services at ICG Margaret Harrison says in the announcement, “Publishers understand the importance of metadata and online marketing to access consumer […]