Spanish newspaper El Pais interviewed Andrew Wylie at the Frankfurt Book Fair, where he reported the sad news that Salman Rushdie has “lost the sight of one eye” and “one hand is incapacitated because the nerves in his arm were cut.” Wylie underscored, “it was a brutal attack” and Rushdie “has about 15 more wounds in his chest and torso.” More broadly, the full interview is classic Wylie. He provides a colorful account of what he believes he said in court during the Penguin Random House antitrust trial: “The mistake the Department of Justice made was they were talking about […]
Scholastic Boosts Their Slumping Stock with $75 Million Buyback
Scholastic has lifted their depressed stock price with an announcement Monday of a $75 million share purchase program through a modified Dutch Auction. The offer opens on Tuesday, October 25 and is scheduled to close by November 22, and will buy back shares at an expected price of between $35 and $40 a share. (On Friday, shares had closed at $33.63 a share.) The company says it is able to finance the buyback through cash on hand. The market has responded as expected, pushing shares up by over $4 a share in the first hour of trading on Monday, though […]
Hoover’s New Novel Sold Over 800,000 Units on Opening Day
Colleen Hoover’s IT STARTS WITH US sold over 800,000 units in the US on its publication day, Tuesday, October 18, publisher Atria reported. That includes considerable pre-orders, along with sales across all major formats (print, ebooks, and digital audiobooks). Atria printed 2.5 million copies, across four printings, and said the book “was the most pre-ordered novel in Simon & Schuster history.” Update: NPD Bookscan subsequently recorded opening week sales of 809,000 hardcovers alone through the outlets that they track.
Frankfurt Deal Trends Show Strong Sales, with Fiction and Debuts Rising
Recently we reported strong third-quarter dealmaking trends in the US, with near-record overall deal volumes, driven by continued strength in adult fiction, and balanced by some weakness in children’s book sales. Now it’s time for our usual look at the “pre-Frankfurt” dealmaking window in particular. Like last year, the Frankfurt Book Fair falls a week later than usual, so for the second year in a row the counts include one extra day of deal reports. (Often, FBF comes five weeks after Labor Day, so the count usually covers five weeks plus one day. When FBF falls late, starting from the […]
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Building on the recent launch of our daily audio version of the day’s publishing news, our Publishers Lunchcast is now available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, where you can listen or subscribe.
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka, Forthcoming from Norton, Wins Booker Prize
Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka won the Booker Prize for his second novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. A creator of rock songs, screenplays and travel stories as well, Karunatilaka’s debut novel, Chinaman (published in the US by Graywolf as The Legend of Pradeep Mathew), won the Commonwealth Prize in 2011. Norton bought North American rights to Seven Moons at auction shortly before the shortlist was announced, and currently has trade paperback publication scheduled for November 1. Independent press Sort of Books published in the UK, and Karunatilaka is represented by David Godwin Agency. In the spring, Little Brown UK […]