Siobhan McBride has joined Carnicelli Literary Management as associate agent representing literary and commercial fiction and narrative nonfiction. She was most recently at Sobel Weber Associates.
Tammy Faxel, 55, publisher at Dreamscape Media, died on March 30. She joined Dreamscape in 2014, and helped grow the company’s audiobook publishing program to over 900 titles annually. Prior to that, she led Waterfall Press for Brilliance Publishing, after working at Tyndale House and Oasis Audio.
Picks
Reese Witherspoon chose Untamed by Glennon Doyle as her April book club pick.
Pennie’s Pick at Costco for April is a new hardcover release, The Yellow Bird Sings by Jennifer Rosner.
Forthcoming
Dav Pilkey will launch a new graphic novel series with the publication of CAT KID COMIC CLUB worldwide on December 1.
Awards
The International Booker Prize named its shortlist, featuring four women. (Nominee Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, 28, identifies as male and uses the pronouns they/them.):
The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree, by Shokoofeh Azar (Farsi-Iran), translated by Anonymous (Europa Editions)
The Adventures of China Iron, by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara (Spanish-Argentina), translated by Iona Macintyre and Fiona Mackintosh (Charco Press)
Tyll, by Daniel Kehlmann (Germany-German), translated by Ross Benjamin (Pantheon/Quercus)
Hurricane Season, by Fernanda Melchor (Spanish-Mexico), translated by Sophie Hughes (New Directions/Fitzcarraldo Editions)
The Memory Police, by Yoko Ogawa (Japanese-Japan), translated by Stephen Snyder, (Pantheon/Harvill Secker)
The Discomfort of Evening, by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld (Dutch-Netherlands), translated by Michele Hutchison, (Faber & Faber)
Cancelled
The ABA’s Children’s Institute, scheduled for late June, has been cancelled. They will reconvene in 2021, from June 16–18, at the same venue, in Tucson, AZ.
Sales
Physical book sales fell just over 1 million units in the sales week ending March 28, compared to the prior week, according to NPD Bookscan, a 9.2 percent week-over-week decline. All of the decline and then some came from adult books, with adult fiction down 21 percent (at 1.83 million units) and adult nonfiction down 16.8 percent (at 3.16 million units).
You can see the impact falling most profoundly at the top of the lists: This time a year ago, for the most recent sales week, the top 10 adult titles overall accounted for sales of approximately 289,000 units — compared to 152,000 this year.
Takedowns
A practical update to our post yesterday on getting your books removed from the Internet Archive’s Open Library. For authors with extensive lists and literary agencies looking for bulk takedowns, the IA’s Jason Scott (@textfiles on Twitter) asked that people mail the request list to nel@textfiles.com, “so I can pass them to a team so they can be faster.”
