Joan Didion died on December 23 at her home in Manhattan of complications from Parkinson’s disease. Didion was the writer of Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Play It As It Lays, The White Album, and other novels, works of nonfiction, and films. Born in Sacramento in 1934, Didion began her career writing for magazines including Life and The Saturday Evening Post. Her 2005 memoir The Year of Magical Thinking won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In 2007, she received the National Book Foundations Medal for Distinguished […]
Archives for December 2021
Holiday News
We are moving into our traditional holiday mode at PM, which is different than many other publications. Our website operates all the time, and we’ll be processing deals, job openings, bestsellers, reviews, Bookscan sales and other data at our site on a regular basis. We’ll continue to cover the news, posting to Publishers Marketplace as appropriate. (A reminder that our News App makes it easy to follow the latest posts and updates on your mobile device.) Publishers Lunch Deluxe will be back at some point next week, with at least one catch-up newsletter to keep from falling too far behind. […]
Bookselling: Politics and Prose Owners Are Open To “Voluntary Recognition” Of Union
The owners of Washington D.C. bookstore Politics and Prose announced that they have approached union organizers to “open the way to a voluntary recognition of the union at P&P.” Co-owners Bradley Graham and Lissa Muscatine wrote in a statement on Wednesday, “Yesterday, we reached out to the union organizers in the spirit of collaboration to propose negotiations on the scope of a collective bargaining unit. Our hope is that these discussions will result in an agreement and open the way to a voluntary recognition of the union at P&P.” The statement continues, “We remain committed to providing a workplace in […]
2021: The Year In Mergers
It was a blockbuster year for mergers and acquisitions, even with the headline-making lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice to try to block Penguin Random House‘s deal to acquire Simon & Schuster. Prospective sellers across the publishing landscape read the environment and made big deals, often at healthy multiples. With growing sales, strong profits, and impressive resales, publishing is actually looking investable to a wider range of players. And there was plenty of notable activity beyond the roster of straight acquisitions. Scholastic experienced a dramatic change in control following the abrupt death of Dick Robinson, and surprising designation of […]
A Holiday Discount
The holidays mean time to offer a substantial discount on new PublishersMarketplace.com memberships. You can try a deep dive into the full resources of our site over the next month, if you give yourself the gift of registration now. Use the “promo code” IGOTPM in the indicated field when you register and enjoy the first month of service for just $15. Feel free to share this offer with anyone you think might be interested. (Please note, you must enter code in the “Promo Code: ___” box when registering to work.) This code is valid through December 27 only.
2021: The Year in Finance
With Bookscan-monitored print sales up 11 percent in units through November and AAP-reported dollars up even more through October, trade publishers are lined up for a strong, and profitable, year. Multiple publishers have set new earnings records so far this year, as the pandemic-related increase in reading – including backlist sales, audio consumption and online purchasing – held, even as lockdown restrictions loosened in many regions. Based mostly on reports for the first three quarters — with a couple of recent updates — here’s where publishers’ march to a profitable 2021 stands for now: Bertelsmann For the first half of […]