Continuing our popular new feature, here is our regular look at how previous month’s high-profile retailer and book club picks fared in the marketplace. (The standing reminder: These statistics are only a partial view, of print sales only. Some of these books were highly anticipated — and well pre-ordered — long before any of these selections were announced. And we know from experience and previous analyses that Reese Witherspoon’s picks will overweight significantly for increased digital audio sales rather than print sales, thanks to her close commercial partnership with Audible.) But over time we expect to see some interesting patterns […]
Archives for September 2019
Dreamspinner Keeps Promising Authors to “Catch Up What Everyone Is Due” In Payments
Romance publisher Dreamspinner Press has not been paying royalties in timely fashion, authors have been reporting online, at least partially confirmed by emailed updates from the company that have been shared. Earlier this summer, authors posted on Twitter that the publisher had been inconsistent with payments for over a year, including delays in issuing both first quarter and second quarter 2019 royalties. In June, author TJ Klune posted, “Out of the last 8 quarters, this is the fourth time payments have been late, and the second in which I am owed penalties for said lateness.” (Klune had said in March […]
People, Etc.
Cindy Uh has joined CAA as agent. Previously, she worked at Thompson Literary Agency. CEO of BookPeople in Austin, TX Elizabeth Jordan will step down from that position, to serve as general manager of author Jenny Lawson’s forthcoming store in San Antonio, Nowhere Bookshop. Associate publisher, Penguin Children’s Jocelyn Schmidt has been promoted to executive vice president. Follett has a formal press release on the expanded responsibilities for evp and overall global general manager Amandeep (Aman) Kochar, who they said in June would take over the Baker & Taylor public library business when David Cully retired at the end of […]
Fox’s CIA Memoir Has Details that Are Typically Blocked
NBC News uses the widely-disseminated galley of former CIA operative Amaryllis Fox’s forthcoming LIFE UNDERCOVER: Coming of Age in the CIA, to share extensive details from the book — meant to illustrate her inclusion of “the sort of details the CIA has censored from previous memoirs.” Among them: The agency typically does not “allow officers to name countries in which they operated, other than war zones,” let alone any discussion of nonofficial cover agents (NOCs) and they how they work; their use of secret “cover communications” software to communicate with sources around the world; and other oerational details. Fox “said […]
Once More, Book Expo Reverts to A Two-Day Show
Book Expo continues to adjust their chairs, announcing in a letter to exhibitors that the 2020 show will — yet again — return to a schedule featuring one day of programming and education (on Wednesday, May 27) and two days only of trade show exhibitions, on Thursday and Friday (closing at 3:00 PM). For the past two years, the show had a hybrid schedule with at least some of the exhibition floor opening on part of Wednesday. “The goal was to give everyone additional time on the floor to discover and connect,” event manager Jennifer Martin writes to exhibitors. “Though […]
Briefs: New from Owens and Clintons, The Atwood Review Embargo, and More
Forthcoming Delia Owens‘ WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING, will be published in a Spanish-language edition in the US and Canada by Vintage Español. La chica salvaje will release in trade paperback on October 29, with Penguin Random House Audio publishing the audio edition. (That’s the title used by El Ático de los Libros in Barcelona, which sold the rights to Vintage.) Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea Clinton‘s children’s book GRANDMA’S GARDENS, highlighting “the special bonds between mothers, grandmothers and the children they love,” will be published by Philomel on March 31. (The Penguin Children’s imprint has published previous books by Chelsea […]