The National Book Awards announced their finalists, with winners to be named on November 18. Everyone who wins this year will be a first-time honoree, since none of the authors has been a finalist previously. Douglas Stuart remains in contention for both the National Book Award for fiction as well as the Booker Prize. The biggest publishers are thoroughly under-represented this year, publishing only two of the fiction nominees, one of the nonfiction candidates, none of the poetry finalists, and two of the translated literature titles. Fiction Rumaan Alam, Leave the World Behind (Ecco) Lydia Millet, A Children’s Bible (Norton) […]
Archives for October 2020
Vivendi Grows Lagardere Stake
Vivendi continues to build their stake in Lagardere, filing notice last week after passing the 25 percent threshold — having built their position up to 26.7 percent of shares. They began buying the stock in April of this year — starting with a 10.6 percent stake — initially as a show of support for management in the first stages of its battle with activist investor Amber Capital. In mid-August Vivendi aligned with Amber in calling to seat four members of the board, and that campaign has intensified since, also enlisting the third-largest shareholder in Lagadere, the Qatar Investment Authority — […]
New Books Publishing October 5
It’s another packed first week of the month, with big new releases in all categories. As in previous weeks, our sample Bookshop and Aerbook store carousels provide easy displays of books publishing today in need of attention and support, featuring: 19 new works of fiction https://bookshop.org/lists/new-fiction-publishing-october-6 23 new nonfiction titles https://bookshop.org/lists/new-nonfiction-publishing-october-6 29 new children’s and YA titles https://bookshop.org/lists/new-children-s-titles-publishing-in-orctoberber We consult a number of sources in compiling our weekly lists and PM members can see our lists for the coming three months through this reference page. But if you want to make sure your key titles are on our radar, now you can use this […]
Women’s Prize Limits Eligibility to Those “Legally Defined as a Woman”
The UK Women’s Prize made a statement clarifying that eligibility is limited to “all women,” declaring that “in our terms and conditions, the word ‘woman’ equates to a cis woman, a transgender woman, or anyone who is legally defined as a woman of the female sex.” Jo Prior, chair of trustees for the prize, writes in the statement, “Over the past quarter of a century the Prize has publicly championed and amplified a diverse breadth of women’s voices, and holds the principle of freedom of expression among its core values. As a Prize which celebrates the voices of women and […]
People, Etc.
People Andrew DeSio has joined Dey: Ideas + Influence as their director, books. Most recently he was at Fortier Public Relations. Picks Jenna Bush Hager’s Today Show Read With Jenna book club named Rumaan Alam‘s Leave the World Behind as its pick this month. Barnes & Noble also chose the book as its October National Book Club selection. On the National Book Award’s longlist for fiction, as noted previously the book was featured earlier this year in our Buzz Books 2020 Fall/Winter sampler with an early excerpt. Forthcoming Ethan Hawke‘s novel A BRIGHT RAY OF DARKNESS, his fifth book, will be published […]
Amazon Delivers…Coronavirus
Under the distracting title of Update On Covid-19 Testing, Amazon published a blog post that reveals their analysis of data on the prevalence of the disease among their front-line employees. Across almost 1.4 million Amazon and Whole Foods Market front-line employees, just under 20,000 people tested positive or were presumed positive. They say they “hope other large companies will also release their detailed learnings and case rates because doing so will help all of us.” Amazon has built their own Covid-19 testing capacity and is “ramping quickly, conducting thousands of tests a day and growing to 50,000 tests a day […]