Employees at Book Culture in Morningside Heights signed a three-year contract Wednesday night after a protracted summer-long fight over attempts to unionize that led to the dismissal of several employees, subsequently reversed. The NY Daily News reports the new deal includes higher wages, fixed raises and affordable health care. “Now everyone is super happy,” Cameron Addicott, one of five employees fired for casting pro-unionization votes (after which four were rehired) told the paper. “We’re able to get back to what we do best. There isn’t any worry in the work place. There’s that knowledge that you have that support.” The […]
ABA Names Indies Introduce Titles For Winter/Spring 2015
The ABA has chosen the ABA’s Winter/Spring 2015 Indies Introduce titles for debut adult fiction & nonfiction, YA, and children’s: Adult fiction: Black River by S.M. Hulse (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, January 20) Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper (Simon & Schuster, January 20) Wolf Winter by Cecilia Ekback (Weinstein Books, January 27) Young Skins by Colin Barrett (Grove Atlantic, March 3, paperback) Soil by Jamie Kornegay (Simon & Schuster, March 10) The Valley by John Renehan (Dutton, March 10) Church of Marvels by Leslie Parry (Ecco, May 12) The Travels of Daniel Ascher by Deborah Levy-Bertherat […]
Amazon Refreshes Kindle eReaders and Tablets, Adding Kids Tablet
After some leaks at their international stores, on Wednesday evening Amazon announced new ereaders and tablets, all set to ship in October. The new basic Kindle is thinner, adds a touchscreen, and sells for $79, with ads. (That’s $10 more than the previous basic model, or 15 percent higher. So the people who fight to control pricing because “e-books can and should be less expensive” are charging more for their least expensive device to read those ebooks.) The newest addition, tipped earlier, is the Kindle Voyage, “the thinnest device we’ve ever built” (7.6 mm thick), weighing 6.4 ounces, with a high-resolution display (300 pixels per inch) and improved front […]
National Book Award Fiction Longlist, and More Awards
The National Book Awards closed out their week of longlists with its ten-book fiction list. Originally slated for announcement on Thursday at 8 AM, the list was first leaked Wednesday evening after 7 PM by the Huffington Post, after which it was posted by the NYT and on the National Book website. The full list: Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman (Grove Press) Molly Antopol, The UnAmericans (Norton) John Darnielle, Wolf in White Van (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See (Scribner) Phil Klay, Redeployment (The Penguin Press) Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven (Knopf) Elizabeth […]
Awards: MacArthur Fellows, Nonfiction National Book Award Longlist
The MacArthur Foundation announced their latest group of 21 Fellows (recipients of $625,000 grants), including graphic novelist Alison Bechdel, poet Terrance Hayes, translator/poet Khaled Mattawa, and playwright Samuel Hunter. The National Book Awards also announced their nonfiction longlist Wednesday. (Notably, the nominees include only one woman; the young people’s literature and poetry longlists were evenly divided between male and female authors.) Roz Chast, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? (Bloomsbury) John Demos, The Heathen School: A Story of Hope and Betrayal in the Age of the Early Republic (Knopf) Anand Gopal, No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and […]
People, Etc.
Abrams will launch a new gift and stationery imprint, Abrams Noterie, in February 2015. The line, which launches with four product collections and two journals, will comprise guided and blank journals, notecards, postcards, desk accessories, small gift books, and other inventive paper product formats. Overseeing Abrams Noterie is Karrie Witkin, who has the new role of editorial director, gift and paper products. (She has worked at Potter Craft and Metropolitan Museum of Art.) The creative team includes associate art director Hana Nakamura, who was at Mucca Design. CEO Michael Jacobs says in the announcement, “The addition of a stationery and gift imprint is […]