Archives for January 2025
Distribution: Six Publishers To Baker & Taylor
Baker & Taylor Publisher Services will sell and distribute: Bad Hand Books, effective March 1; Gloo Books, effective immediately; MamaBear Books, effective immediately; Platypus Media, effective immediately; Little Creek Press, effective April 1; and Central European University Press, effective March 1.
2024 Print Sales, For the Record
Circana Bookscan issued a brief statement on 2024 print sales, with total units growing a rounded 1 percent in 2024, to 783 million units overall (up 5 million units from 2023). Note that for much financial reporting 2024 is a 53 week year — but for sales comparison purposes, Bookscan has adjusted to count only 52 sales weeks from 2024. (When publishers issue public reports, they will show 53-week years, with appropriate sales bumps for the extra week.) Adult fiction led the market, growing 9.5 million units to 201 million books, while adult nonfiction fell by 1.1 million units to […]
Forthcoming: ‘Mamba & Mambacita Forever’ by Vanessa Bryant
MCD will publish MAMBA & MAMBACITA FOREVER by Vanessa Bryant, wife of the late basketball player Kobe Bryant, on August 19. The book is focused on “the images and stories of more than a hundred murals honoring [Bryant’s] husband and daughter,” who died unexpectedly in 2020. The publisher writes, “In perhaps the largest and most intense outpouring of public art the world has ever seen, murals went up on seemingly every available wall in Los Angeles and around the globe. The paintings were both professional and amateur, some public and some private, many of them colossal.” The book contains photos […]
Obituaries: Jules Feiffer, Karen Solem
Pulitzer Prize winning writer and cartoonist Jules Feiffer, 95, died on January 17 of congestive heart failure. His comic strip “Feiffer” originally appeared in the Village Voice starting in 1956, and eventually ran in 100 papers. Feiffer won a Pulitzer in 1986. He went on to illustrate the classic edition of The Phantom Tollbooth, among many other works. Karen Solem, former editor, literary agent, and founder of Spencerhill Associates, died on January 19. Solem was “a trailblazer who paved the way for female editors” and published Nora Roberts’ first 100 books, while also playing “a key role in launching the […]
Penguin Random House to Acquire Australia’s Text Publishing
Text Publishing in Melbourne, Australia announced a deal in which they will be acquired by Penguin Random House. The publisher was founded in 1990 and has been majority owned by publisher Michael Heyward and senior editor Penny Hueston, in partnership with Maureen and Tony Wheeler (the founders of Lonely Planet). Heyward said in the release, “Text has created an unparalleled space for itself in Australian publishing. Now it’s time for a new owner to provide a home for the company’s entrepreneurial energies and its family of brilliant authors. We are lucky to have the right custodian in Penguin Random House […]