As the year draws to a close, we are running out of new releases. Here are the titles debuting for the rest of the month, including fiction from Katie Holt, Darby Kane, P.J. Nelson, and more, and nonfiction by David M. Perry and Matthew Gabriele and Olivia Campbell. 20 works of fiction https://bookshop.org/lists/new-fiction-through-december 5 works of nonfiction https://bookshop.org/lists/new-nonfiction-through-december 15 children’s titles https://bookshop.org/lists/december-2024-children-s-releases We consult a number of sources in compiling our weekly lists and PM members can see our lists for the coming months on Bookshop. Check out January‘s 80 fiction releases, 38 […]
Vivendi Spin-Off Plan Is Approved, and Lagardere Stake will Trade As Louis Hachette Group
Vivendi shareholders approved the company’s plan to break up the conglomerate into multiple parts, with new stock listings later this month for the Canal+ broadcasting assets, the advertising agency Havas, and a newly-named Louis Hachette Group. That Louis Hachette Group will comprise Vivendi’s controlling 66.5 percent stake in Lagardere (which includes both Lagardere Publishing as well as the big travel retail division), alongside Prisma Media, France’s leading magazine publisher. The Bolloré Group, which currently controls Vivendi, will own roughly 31 percent of the Louis Hachette Group, which will begin trading on the Euronext Growth (Paris) stock exchange on December 16, […]
Bloom Books Expands to Brazil and Germany
Sourcebooks’ fast-growing Bloom Books imprint — which had close to $100 million in gross sales in 2023 — is expanding with two international imprints alongside partner companies at Penguin Random House. In August, the company launched Bloom Germany with the publication of a German-language edition of Sophie Lark’s Kingmakers: Year One, working with Penguin Random House Germany. They expect to publish 14 titles next year. SVP audio, strategic & digital development at Penguin Random House Germany Matthias Aichele says in the announcement, “The positive feedback from our partnership has been overwhelming, and we are thrilled to unveil a lineup of […]
Preparing for Public Domain Day 2025
A standard year-end feature, various organizations are starting to make lists of notable works entering the public domain on January 1, 2025. Notable books coming out of copyright include: A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway; The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner; A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf; Tarzan and the Lost Empire by Edgar Rice Burroughs; Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett; Ellery Queen’s first mystery The Roman Hat Mystery; The Crime at Black Dudley by Margery Allingham; the first English translation of All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque; and more. […]
HBG to Encourage Pleasure Reading Among Kids in 2025
HBG and Hachette UK ceo David Shelley’s year-end letter focuses on concern over declines in pleasure reading by children. In response, “We’re launching a new venture next year which is relatively simple but hopefully will have some efficacy: Raising Readers, which is to include a page at the back of many of our black-and-white adult books, talking about the value of fostering a lifelong habit of reading for pleasure and tips on how to do so. Ideally, this letter would be signed by whoever created the book, either based on a template we’ll provide or in your own words.” He […]
The First of the Best of the Best Books of 2024
The lists are flowing and we are ready with the first iteration of our annual aggregations of the very best of the “best books of the year,” including votes from about 35 sources so far. This year the issue of the Book of the Year is already settled: Percival Everett’s JAMES, fresh from his National Book Award for Fiction, is far and away the consensus choice. Also, with Danzy Senna’s COLORED TELEVISION in contention for the top 10 works of fiction, Everett and Senna are our first-ever married couple to make the list together. As is standard for this time […]