Bowker released their statistics charting ISBN-carrying self-published print and ebooks for 2018, showing continued strong growth for CreateSpace, which has eaten nearly the entire, still-expanding market (regulators, take note). CreateSpace issued 1.416 million self-published titles in print-on-demand editions in 2018 — up more than 52 percent from 2017. With that growth, they went from 85 percent of the market in 2017 to 91.5 percent share in 2018. As we have noted previously, Bowker does not have counts for the Ingram Spark program, since Ingram directs customers to register for their own ISBNs directly. That’s likely included in the miscellaneous “small […]
Booker Prize Awarded to Both Atwood and Evaristo
The Booker Prize judges broke with the award’s firm policy and jointly conferred this year’s award on two novels: The Testaments by Margaret Atwood and Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo. Evaristo is the first black woman to win the prize, and at 79 Atwood is the oldest winner. (Atwood won the award in 2000 for The Blind Assassin.) “We’ve both got curly hair,” Atwood said in receiving the prize, indicated she was surprised, thinking she was “too elderly, and I don’t really need the attention. It would have been embarrassing if I was alone here,” she said to Evaristo. […]
Bookseller Allison Hill to Become New ABA Chief Executive
American Booksellers Association president Jamie Fiocco announced Friday that Allison K. Hill will take over as ceo of the organization on March 1. She has been president and CEO of Vroman’s Bookstore, in Pasadena, CA. She will succeed Oren Teicher, who is retiring after 10 years of the leading the ABA. The association’s senior program officer Joy Dallanegra-Sanger will be promoted to COO, as of November 1, when Teicher will officially relinquish his duties as ceo. Hill says in the announcement, “I can’t think of a better opportunity to exercise my passion for books, bookstores, and changing the world through […]
Nobel: English Version of Tokarczuk’s “Masterpiece” In the Works, PEN America Denounces Handke Awards
Nobel winner Olga Tokarczuk’s THE BOOKS OF JACOB will be published in English in late 2020 or early 2021 by Riverhead, again translated by Jennifer Croft, translator of FLIGHTS. Croft is still at work on the roughly 900-page book, winner of Poland’s Nike Literature Award in 2015, “delves into the life and times of the controversial historical figure Jacob Frank, leader of a heretical Jewish splinter group that ranged the Habsburg and Ottoman empires and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth seeking basic safety as well as transcendence.” Croft writes for the Paris Review, “Considered by many to be her masterpiece, The Books of […]
The Early Frankfurt Dealmaking Preview: Steady Volumes, Fewer Big Deals
It’s one of those rare years in which the Frankfurt Book Fair, starting next Wednesday, will be convened six weeks after Labor Day instead of the usual five weeks (probably due to the late Jewish holidays). While we will share the official stats on the pre-FBF selling season a week from now, that schedule variation means we do already have a full sample data set of five weeks and a day for early comparison, which is our usual standard. From what we see in the current data, total pre-Frankfurt domestic deal volume looks to be just about flat again this […]
International: Companhia das Letras Acquires Zahar, Sourcebooks Expands
Companhia das Letras in Brazil announced last week that they took 100 percent control of Zahar, based in Rio de Janeiro and focused on books devoted to the human and social sciences. Luiz Schwarcz says in the announcement that founder Jorge Zahar “was a master when it came to publishing books that would stay the course…. I have had no greater honor in my life than being chosen to carry forth a legacy that changed the history of book publishing in Brazil.” Penguin Random House owns 70 percent of Companhia, and ceo Markus Dohle adds, “It’s an enormous privilege for all […]