• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Login
  • Register
Publishers Lunch logo Publishers Lunch logo
  • Publishers Marketplace
  • Site Guide
  • Help
Login Sign Up
  • Personnel
  • AI
  • Compensation
  • Unions
  • Book Bans
  • New Releases
  • Earnings
  • The Trial
  • Archives
Publishers Lunch logo
  • Publishers Marketplace
  • Site Guide
  • Help
  • Publishers Marketplace
  • Site Guide
  • Help

January 3, 2018By Erin Somers

People, Etc.: Fred Bass Dies at 89, and More

January 3, 2018By Erin Somers

Longtime owner of The Strand bookstore Fred Bass, 89, died on Wednesday at home in Manhattan of congestive heart failure. He started working at the store, founded by his father, when he was 13, and just retired last November. During that time, he oversaw the store’s significant growth from its original home on Fourth Street with 70,000 volumes to “the largest used-book store in the world” on Broadway — where he bought the store’s building for $8.2 million in 1997 — with millions of volumes and a storage warehouse in Brooklyn.

The NYT quotes a remark Bass made to New York Magazine in 1977: “It’s a disease. I get an attack, something like a panic, of book-buying. I simply must keep fresh used books flowing over my shelves. And every day the clerks weed out the unsalable stuff from the shelves and bins and we throw it out. Tons of dead books go out nightly. And I bought ’em. But I just have to make room for fresh stock to keep the shelves lively.” His daughter Nancy Bass Wyden now owns the store.

Award-winning Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld, 85, died Thursday in Tel Aviv.

People
National Book Award winner and former Young People’s Poet Laureate Jacqueline Woodson has been named National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. She said in a statement, “I think the work ahead of me is challenging. I don’t believe there are ‘struggling’ readers, ‘advanced’ readers or ‘non’ readers. I’d love to walk away from my two years as Ambassador with the qualifiers gone and young people able to see themselves beyond stigma or oft-times debilitating praise. Martin Luther King Jr. said people should not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. In that regard, I think young people should not be judged by the level of their reading but by the way a book makes them think and feel. By the way it gives them hope. By the way it opens them up to new perspectives and changes them. I’m excited to have these conversations with some of the best conversationalists in our country–our young people.”

At Liveright, Gina Iaquinta has been promoted to assistant editor.

Brennin Cummings has been promoted to assistant marketing manager for Putnam.

Picks
Book of the Month Club readers selected John Boyne’s The Heart’s Invisible Furies as their favorite book of 2017.

Filed Under: Free, Personnel

sidebar

Primary Free Sidebar

Login

Forgot Password Quick Pass User Login
Get Full Access
The Publishing Industry’s Essential Daily Read

Each Publishers Lunch Deluxe subscription includes full access to our searchable multi-year archive of industry news, a nightly email reporting 10 to 50 deal transactions, and our database of industry contacts, scripts, and posting privileges.

Learn More

RSS Automat

  • Researchers Find That Newer Meta AI Models Have Memorized More of Popular Books Like Harry Potter June 20, 2025 Ars Technica
  • David Steinberger Interviews James Daunt on the Open Book Podcast June 20, 2025 Open Road
  • Sourcebooks Makes Inc.'s Best Workplaces 2025 List June 18, 2025 Magazine list
  • Pearson to Acquire Career and Technical Education Leader eDynamic Learning June 16, 2025 Press Release
  • James Frey Has Rich Friends, and They Like His New Book June 12, 2025 WSJ
  • Leon Levy Foundation Awards $300,000 Grant to the Authors Guild Foundation to Preserve Literary Advocacy Archives June 10, 2025 Authors Guild
  • Trending: Tote Bags That Hold Just A Book June 10, 2025 Elle
  • Hadley, MA B&N Workers OK Union Contract After Two Years of Negotiation June 6, 2025 Daily Hampshire Gazette
  • Authors Guild Update On Albert Whitman Bankruptcy Hearing June 5, 2025 AG post
  • "Frozen Yogurt and Fiction Collide" As Pinkberry Promotes Emily Henry (And Their Limited Flavor, Summer Melon Crush) June 3, 2025 Press release
Publishers Marketplace logo

Contact Us

News

  • Publishers Marketplace
  • Report News
  • Discuss
  • Classifieds
  • Rights Offerings

Deals

  • Report A Deal

Books

  • Buzz Books

Jobs

  • Job Board
  • Privacy Policy Terms of Use