Hachette Book Group‘s planned relocation has become real estate news via Crain’s, which confirms the publisher’s lease of space at 1290 Sixth Avenue for occupancy some time next year. They are taking over a chunk of two floors recently vacated by Microsoft. The move will put them across the street from their old home in the Time-Life Building (and just north of Simon & Schuster). Booknet Canada and Nielsen have released a study (as a pdf) of the lift in sales of works by Alice Munro after she was named the Nobel Laureate in Literature in October. (The prize was […]
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The President’s Book Purchases
Once again, President Obama included a bookstore shopping spree as part of his commemoration of the American Express-created Small Business Saturday. This time he and his daughters visited Politics & Prose, where he spent approximately 30 speaking with customers and purchasing the following books. He said they were selected to cover readers of all ages, “from 5 to 52” (his own age). According to the White House, President Obama bought: The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, Carson McCullers Red Sparrow, Jason Matthews The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini Ragtime, E.L. Doctorow The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini Buddha […]
People, Children’s Imprints, Etc.
At Crown, Sarah Pekdemir has been named senior marketing manager, Crown Trade. At Behrman House, Dena Neusner has been promoted to executive editor. The New York Public Library will pay $2.15 million — funded in large part by a private donation — to purchase 190 boxes of Tom Wolfe‘s papers, “including drafts, outlines and research materials for his four novels and 12 other books as well as his uncollected journalism.” As previewed earlier in the week, World Book Night US has addred three YA titles to the list of books to be given away on April 22, 2014: Zora and […]
McBride, Packer Lead National Book Award Winners
The National Book Awards’ move towards greater visibility and recognition culminated in much the same way as in previous years: a mixture of expected and surprise winners. New Yorker staff writer George Packer took the nonfiction prize for THE UNWINDING, while James McBride’s THE GOOD LORD BIRD (Riverhead) won the fiction prize, surprising the author — who did not prepare a speech, since he was among those who expected one of the other nominees to prevail. “They are fine writers,” McBride said of the other nominees, “but this sure is nice.” The judges called him “a voice as comic and original as […]
Briefs: New Divisions for Macmillan Children’s UK; Charlotte Zolotow Dies; and More
Macmillan Children’s UK announced the creation of two audience-focused publishing divisions, Macmillan Under 6s, to be overseen by publisher Stephanie Barton, and Macmillan Over 6s, led by Venetia Gosling. Both Barton and Gosling will report to Belinda Rasmussen, with Gosling also working with Pan Macmillan publisher Jeremy Trevethan on crossover projects. Each new division also announced additional promotions: At Under 6s, Suzanne Carnell becomes publishing director, Picture Books & Pre-School, and Jackie McCann moves up to editorial director, Campbell and nursery. At Over 6s, Gaby Morgan has been promoted to editorial director, adding backlist strategy to her existing remit of […]
The Next Book About Publishing
New York Magazine shares some short anecdotes from Dan Menaker’s forthcoming book MY MISTAKE, which releases tomorrow. “Financial success in frontlist publishing is very often random, but the media conglomerates that run most publishing houses act as if it were not…. Let’s say you publish a fluky blockbuster one year, the corporation will see a spike in your profits and sort of autistically, or at least automatically, raise the profit goal for your division by some corporately predetermined amount for the following year. This is close to clinically insane institutional behavior.” Also: “I think it’s impossible to do an editor-in-chief’s […]