Mirabelle Korn has been promoted to editor at Chronicle Books.
Claire Fallon has been promoted to publicity and operations associate at Coffee House Press, and Enrique Olivarez has joined the company as development director.
Bookselling
Bay Books in Coronado, CA has reopened in their new space, after the original location nearby was closed at the end of 2019. For now, the store accepts pickup orders from 10 AM to 2 PM and is providing free delivery within Coronado.
Relief
Stephen King and John Grisham will hold a free online conversation discussing their new books on Wednesday, April 29 at 7:00 PM Eastern. “In lieu of admission, the authors hope attendees will consider donating to the Bookseller Industry Charitable Foundation: https://secure.donationpay.org/bincfoundation/. You can register at grishamking.eventbrite.com or watch on Stephen King’s YouTube Channel. Questions for the authors can go use #AskKingandGrisham
Starting Monday, April 27, fans can listen to a free podcast version of Rachel Renee Russel’s first Dork Diaries book. Produced in partnership with Simon & Schuster Audio, the multi-voiced production complete with music and sound effects will unfold in 15 episodes, every Monday and Friday. S&S Audio president Chris Lynch says in the release, “Many parents are stuck at home looking for a new way to entertain their children. By taking the unprecedented step of adapting such an enormous bestseller and offering it free as podcast, we are giving families something that they can enjoy together, screen free.”
The International Publishers Association wrote an open letter to the governments of the world asking them for support. “In many countries, our industry is already struggling for oxygen,” they wrote. “We must find ways to ensure the future for authors, publishers, editors, designers, distributors, booksellers and those who work in collective management, so that the book industry can bounce back once this pandemic is conquered.”
Bad Books
Kobo ceo Michael Tamblyn asked the people submitting ebooks about fake COVID-19 cures through their self-publishing platform to, “Just. &%$*@. Stop.” He reports they are rejecting “over 50 percent of the ebooks submitted dealing with” the virus. “They are filled with near-criminal snake-oil quackery, conspiracy theories, and raw disinformation.” And that was before the ones about disinfectant and UV light.
Also: “PS – To the other people who are cut-and-pasting free material from the #WHO website, sticking a cover on it and trying to charge for it: less bad, but so lame.”
Plus
The anonymous bookseller and indie press employee who created the @PublishrsWeakly Twitter account corresponded with Electric Lit (which unfortunately mistyped the address throughout the piece as @PublishersWeakly): “The account started as a way to send up Publisher’s Weekly’s #BooksAreEssential campaign. One of us is a currently out-of-work bookseller, and using the language of the COVID-19 era, saying that books are an essential service, seems to imply that the industry is willing to put people’s bodies on the line to sell a $14 paperback, and there’s no universe in which that is in any way justifiable.” Then “it quickly became about critiquing the industry as a whole.”