Unlike the Swedes, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has recognized the existence of women, awarding this year’s Peace Prize to two journalists, Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov, “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.” Notably, Ressa’s book HOW TO STAND UP TO A DICTATOR is scheduled for publication in the UK next April from WH Allen. Rights are represented by Rafe Sagalyn at ICM in the US, and Helen Manders at Curtis Brown UK for translation (on behalf of Stephanie Thwaites). Additionally, for US readers to experience the words of new […]
Expanding The Known World with AAP’s New Annual Statistics
The AAP released a revamped version of their StatShot Annual Report on Friday, which features a surprise gift to everyone who values actual data about the book business. After years of presenting only “modeled” (or, in our view, more like “mottled”) charts that aim to guesstimate information about the entire bookselling landscape that is never actually reported or verified, the organization is now also “showing their work,” presenting a meaningfully-enhanced section of directly collected actual data. There are nine glorious pages of “Direct Data” in all, including a number of tables focused on trade publishing in particular. As another part […]
Third Quarter Deal Trends
Next week we will report on dealmaking in the six-week “pre-Frankfurt” window, but first we present the next installment in this year’s new look at quarterly deal trends. The first half of 2021 saw a marked surge in dealmaking, in line with record increases in consumer book sales: First quarter 2021 US deal volume was 19 percent higher than in 2020, and second quarter deal volume remained 18 percent higher than the same quarter the previous year. Those increases in deal volume tracked very closely with Bookscan print unit data, which showed sales at measured outlets up 18.4 percent in […]
ABA Announces Governance Changes, Rebounds In Member Counts
The ABA is making changes to its by-laws and ends policies. Among those changes is a focus on their revised mission of serving bookstores in particular (including used bookstores). Current bylaws define eligible members as “any commercial establishment that is primarily engaged in the retail sale of new books,” which will be revised to, “businesses that primarily sell books, meaning more than 50 percent of their inventory must be in books and/or book media.” An adjustment in the ends policies reaches beyond store owners, who were the founding focus of the ABA, to include bookstore staff. The group now promises […]
Nobel to Gurnah, As US Readers Will Have to Wait
Tanzanian-born novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.” Gurnah writes in English, and teaches English Literature at the University of Kent in Canterbury. His principal publisher has been Bloomsbury UK. His longtime editor there Alexandra Pringle said, “He is one of the greatest living African writers, and no one has ever taken any notice of him and it’s just killed me. I did a podcast last week and in it I said that […]
Obituary: Literary Agent Philip Spitzer, 82
Philip Spitzer, 82, founder of the eponymous literary agency, died on October 5 in Southampton, NY. His clients included James Lee Burke, Michael Connelly, Alafair Burke, Andre Dubus, Andre Dubus III, Ken Bruen, Simon Van Booy, among many others. Spitzer began his career as an editorial assistant at NYU Press and got his starting in agenting in the 1960s, when he worked for John Cushman Associates, then the American affiliate of Curtis, Brown, London. In 1969 he formed the Philip G. Spitzer Literary Agency, representing a broad range of fiction and nonfiction writers, as well more than a dozen French […]