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 […]
Taylor Swift Book Sold 814,000 Copies In the First Two Days
Circana Bookscan reported that Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour book sold 814,000 hardcovers on Friday and Saturday at Target stores. The WSJ had previously reported that Target ordered 2 million copies of the book, which leaves plenty in inventory for the days ahead. That makes the book the fastest-selling release of 2024, and Bookscan noted it is “the second-highest adult non-fiction release in BookScan history, just behind Barack Obama’s A Promised Land, which sold 816,300 print units in its first week of sales.” More recently, that makes it comparable to the release of Colleen Hoover’s IT STARTS WITH US two […]
Final Judgement: AAP’s Victory Over Internet Archive Becomes Permanent, and Now They’ll Get Paid
The AAP (Association of American Publishers) prevailed over the Internet Archive’s mass infringement of books twice: First in District Court in March 2023, and then again before the Court of Appeals in September 2024. December 3 was the last day in which the Internet Archive could have filed a cert petition with the Supreme Court and they did not do so — which means the previous rulings are now final. The AAP says in a statement, “We are pleased that the Second Circuit’s September 4, 2024 opinion stands as the eloquent legal ending to this case, as it draws extensively […]