The ABA has announced the 20 titles for their Spring 2014 Indies Introduce New Voices program. The list includes new NBF 5-Under-35 honoree Molly Antopol. Adult Fiction The Un-Americans, by Molly Antopol (Norton) The Kept, by James Scott (Harper) The Wives of Los Alamos, by Tarashea Nesbit (Bloomsbury) Shotgun Lovesongs, by Nickolas Butler (Thomas Dunne Books) Point of Direction, by Rachel Weaver (IG Publishing) Faces in the Crowd, by Valeria Luiselli (Coffee House Press) Adult Nonfiction If Only You People Could Follow Directions, by Jessica Hendry Nelson (Counterpoint) Badluck Way: A Year on the Ragged Edge of the West, by […]
eBook Sales Fall Three Months In A Row As Overall Trade Declines Continue
The AAP issued a belated double batch of sales statistics for May and June from their approximately 1,200 reporting publishers, along with sub-totals for the first half of the year. Just as remarkable sales for The Hunger Games and then Fifty Shades lifted results in 2012, the absence of monster hits since then continues to weigh on industry-wide stats. The two big numerical trends continued: After flattening last fall, overall trade sales have declined for 8 consecutive months. And ebook sales, which had been growing — albeit slowly — have now declined for 3 straight months. May trade sales of $525 […]
Finally, the National Book Awards Fiction Longlist
The last of the four NBA longlists, for fiction, was announced Thursday morning. Evenly divided between men and women, it includes two previous NBA winners (Alice McDermott and Thomas Pynchon, though the latter declined to accept his 1974 award for Gravity’s Rainbow) and a few previous nominees. There is only one debut novelist (Anthony Marra), two story collections (Saunders and Silber), and most of the nominees come from four big houses. As people are discussing the newly announced changes in Booker candidates for 2014, under the existing rules Jhumpa Lahiri is a contender for both prizes: Pacific, Tom Drury (Grove) […]
Sales Fall 6% At Scholastic As Loss Is Slimmed
Sales at Scholastic fell 6 percent in their first quarter, down $17 million to $276 million, but their seasonal loss was trimmed as well, with their operating loss about $1 million lower at $45.9 million. The children’s book publishing and distribution division had sales of $54.6 million — down from $70.9 million a year ago — with the seasonal loss of $61.5 million $6.6 million higher. (The book clubs and fairs take a loss when school is not in session.) The return to normal of The Hunger Games continues to weigh on that division, and lowered the comps in international […]
Booker Opens to Any Book Originated In English and Published in UK
On Wednesday the Booker Prize organizers formally announced what had been the subject of speculation and debate over the past few days: They will expand eligibility beyond the Commonwealth, to include any novel “originally written in English and published in the UK.” At the same time, the prize will try to keep submissions to a reasonable number, so the newly-eligible authors will be competing with existing pool for nomination slots from their publishers. As is currently the case, nominations can only be made by UK publishers — but a revised, self-reinforcing submissions process will favor publishers who have had titles […]
NBA Nonfiction Longlist Includes Packer and Wright
The National Book Awards announced their third longlist, of nonfiction candidates, on Wednesday morning. Norton led all publishers with three titles in contention. (The list also includes three New Yorker staff writers: Lepore, Packer and Wright.): Finding Florida: The True Story of the Sunshine State, T.D. Allman (Grove/Atlantic) Facing the Wave: A Journey in the Wake of the Tsunami, Gretel Ehrlich (Pantheon) The Wolf and the Watchman: A Father, a Son, and the CIA, Scott C. Johnson (Norton) Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin, Jill Lepore (Knopf) Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields, […]