NYC’s 92Y abruptly cancelled an event featuring Viet Thanh Nguyen on Friday, after Nguyen signed an open letter in London Review of Books criticizing Israel. The event was to be a discussion with novelist Min Jin Lee about Nguyen’s new nonfiction book, A Man of Two Faces. 92Y claimed the event was only postponed, but Nguyen said he was notified that the event was cancelled, and organizer Bernard Schwartz, the director of the Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center, moved the event downtown to McNally Jackson. 92Y wrote in a statement on Saturday, “We are a Jewish institution that has always welcomed […]
Archives for October 2023
Sales Trends Turn Positive
For the last three weeks, Circana Bookscan’s weekly totals of print book sales have been ahead of results for 2022, showing positive signs from the marketplace heading into the biggest sales period of the year. The only other time this year that current weekly sales have run ahead of last year for more than one week at a time was a five-week streak in March and April headed into Easter. The total market gained approximately 500,000 units over the past three weeks versus the same sales weeks in 2022, with the gains driven by adult titles, which were up 4 […]
Frankfurt Concludes With A Speech From Rushdie
Frankfurt Book Fair concluded over the weekend, with overall trade attendance rising to 105,000 (up from 93,000 in 2022), a continuing rebound since the pandemic. (Our standard reminder: Their count is not what it seems. FBF tallies visits or scans rather than unique individuals. So the three trade days averaged 35,000 visits a day. Many of those were likely the same people, on multiple days.) What was supposed to be a celebration of the fair’s 75th year was ultimately politically fraught. In the halls of the convention center the conflict in the Middle East was inescapable, sometimes with messy outcomes. […]
Distribution: Grupo Nivel Uno
Beginning February 1, the Editorial Nivel Uno and Casa Creación imprints of Spanish-language Christian publisher Grupo Nivel Uno will be exclusively sold and distributed by Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial. Beginning January 3, Neem Tree Press, Portage & Main Press, and Willsow will be sold and distributed by Consortium.
People 10/23
Call for Spring/Summer Season Preview Listings
Our forthcoming Buzz Books 2024: Spring/Summer samplers will include, as usual, extensive seasonal preview/overview listings of notable titles on the way. We compile these big roundups by looking at publisher catalogs; our own comprehensive monthly lists of significant forthcoming books; hints from our substantial flow of deal reports; aggregation of “anticipated books” lists from other publications; word-of-mouth within the industry; and more. If you have notable spring/summer titles you would like to have considered for the preview list — particularly ones you are concerned we might have missed from the regular signals, along with drop-ins and rescheduled releases — now […]