Michael Rentas has joined Artbook | DAP as vp, chief financial & operating officer. He was previously at Ingram Content Group.
School and Library Book Bans Go Digital, Restricting Entire Collections
At least three counties have removed access to e-reading apps used by schools and libraries in a continued effort to restrict children’s access to books, NBC News reports. In Tennessee, Texas, and Florida, a few parents have objected to digital reading platforms, including OverDrive and Epic, aiming to restrict access to books on gender, race, and LGBTQ+ themes. The apps became even more widely used due to the pandemic and virtual schooling. These bans affect all users, not just individual students, and all titles — removing access to entire digital collections of books for the sake of restricting a few, […]
Bloomsbury Increases Staff to Fight Burnout
Bloomsbury will add 100 new staff positions “across all areas of the company” to help alleviate workload for existing employees, The Bookseller reports. The move comes after a UK survey reported “industry-wide burnout.” The company has not announced which territories, departments, or positions will see the staffing increase. A spokesperson told the magazine, “These positions are targeted where our business is growing, where we want to increase support for our authors and grow the global presence of our most important brands, and where we know there are pinch points for our staff. As they join Bloomsbury, these new colleagues will […]
Trade Sales Up 11.9 Percent in February
The AAP released its February 2022 StatShot data from reporting publishers, showing total trade sales of $648 million for the month, an 11.9 percent increase over last year, when sales were $579 million. Adult books increased 7 percent to $443 million, with hardcover sales up 8.8 percent to $129 million and paperback sales up 26.4 percent to $151 million. Mass market sales were down (26.5) percent to $16 million. Children’s and young adult books had overall sales of $205 million, a 24.2 percent increase. Paperbacks saw the highest gains, with sales of $83 million, up 34 percent. Hardcovers were up […]
NYRB Goes Back to Print on Pulitzer Winner
New York Review Books told PL that they had more than 2,000 copies of Joshua Cohen’s The Netanyahus in stock when it was announced as the winner of the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. Now there are orders for nearly 10,000 copies, they say, “a huge portion of which are coming from independent bookstores.” They expect those reprints to arrive in early June, and are placing additional orders this week.
Chelsea Green Suit Against Sen. Warren “Unlikely to Succeed”
A judge rejected a request from publisher Chelsea Green and authors of the book The Truth About COVID-19 that Sen. Elizabeth Warren retract a letter that criticizes the book as “vaccine misinformation,” the AP reports. Chelsea Green and authors Dr. Joseph Mercola, Ronald Cummins and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. sued Warren in November after Warren wrote a letter to Amazon criticizing the retailer for “peddling misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines and treatments through its search and ‘Best Seller’ algorithms” that led the book to top search results. The plaintiffs argue in their lawsuit that Warren’s letter infringes on their First Amendments […]