Eileen Ahearn, 75, best-known as a former administrator of the James Baldwin Estate, passed away after a short illness on January 6. Ahearn began her career in publishing as a typist at Random House in the early 1970s, alongside the late Carolyn Reidy, with whom she would work and consult over five decades. She served as secretary to Toni Morrison when she was an editor, which turned into a lifelong bond. For the last nearly 30 years of her career, she worked as a consultant with Reidy at Simon & Schuster, retiring in 2020.
PRH Says SPARE Sold Over 3.2 Million Units
Penguin Random House announced figures for opening week sales for Prince Harry’s memoir SPARE, which they report sold over 3.2 million units across print, digital, and audio formats. US sales reached 1.6 million units. UK sales were 800,000 units. PRH Canada sold 215,000 units, and PRH Australia had sales of 64,000 units.
SPARE Counts
NPD Bookscan tabulated first week hardcover US sales of Prince Harry’s memoir SPARE of approximately 630,000 copies in the primary edition (separate from large print and Spanish-language editions). In the UK, Nielsen Bookscan counted opening week sales of 467,000 copies.
Bookselling: More Barnes On the Move
There may be a lot of these short items this year, as Barnes & Noble adjusts their real estate portfolio — opening, but also closing, a number of stores. In Philadelphia, the chain will close their big two-story Walnut Street store in Rittenhouse on February 15 after more than 25 years there. They will move to a smaller location on Chestnut Street in the spring. Near Sacramento, CA, later this month they will close their store at The Promenade at Sacramento Gateway in Natomas.
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Open Road Targets Ad Initiative, Flips Process
Open Road has revamped their Activation service, an advertising program for frontlist books introduced last summer, reflecting the insights of new chief marketing officer Pete McCarthy. The initiative now harnesses granular consumer data from the company’s core Ignition service that markets and distributes ebooks for client publishers, providing a broad spectrum of very specific audience targeting. Consumer segments they can market to range from, as the release says, cyberpunk and military history to vegan cooking, and “hyper-specific targets include such segments as neuroscience, birds of prey, ancient greek history, mixed martial arts, and parisian enthusiast.” As McCarthy says in the […]