In advance of the scheduled launch event on Wednesday — which we noted in brief on Tuesday — details have been released on New York City’s One Book, One New York program. After a couple of aborted efforts in the past, this one is officially on, under the auspices of the Mayor’s Office of Media & Entertainment (which recently added the book publishing business to its umbrella), run by commissioner Julie Menin. She notes in the press release, “The publishing industry is a vital element of the city’s creative economy. We’re thrilled to celebrate our enduring literary capital with the […]
Awards
People, Etc.
Susan Jurevics will leave her position as ceo of Pottermore at the end of February, and she will not be replaced. Rather, Neil Blair will oversee the initiative, with the current leadership under Jurevics taking on responsibility for day-to-day operations. As we pointed out in November, on an operating basis Pottermore has lost close to £50 million, showing a slim overall profit primarily driven by the windfall of guaranteed royalties from Sony — which terminated their licensing deal after failing to gain traction of their own. The company did say it was “on the path to profitability” for the current fiscal year, […]
People, Etc.
At Portfolio and Sentinel, Bria Sandford has been promoted to senior editor. Former longtime chairman of Canongate for 22 years (and stepfather of Jamie Byng) Christopher Bland, 78, died on Sunday of prostate cancer. He also had served as chair of the BBC board of governors and the Royal Shakespeare Company, and published two novels in the past few years. The UK’s Women’s Prize for Fiction is looking for a new sponsor after Bailey’s said it had “regretfully decided to make way for a new sponsor” after this year’s award. They took over sponsorship of what had been the Orange Prize in 2014. Chief […]
Hamid Tops March Indie Next List
The March Indie Next list makes Mohsin Hamid’s new novel their No. 1 pick. The list also includes the much-anticipated new novel from Christina Baker Kline, which you can start reading right now in our February Buzz Books Monthly (along with excerpts from Elan Mastai’s debut All Our Wrong Todays, Pam Jenoff’s The Orphan’s Tale, and more.) Download it now for free at Amazon, iBooks and Google Play, and share it with your reader communities to help build buzz for all of publishing in February. And enjoy the book-discovery experience of the upcoming Winter Institute without ever leaving your chair with our just-released big Spring/Summer […]
March Wins Four Awards at ALA
The American Library Association presented their annual book awards at their mid-winter meeting in Atlanta. First came the naming of the Carnegie Medalists on Sunday night, Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad and Matthew Desmond’s Evicted (the two consensus fiction and nonfiction books of the year in our annual aggregation as well). On Monday morning, at the Youth Media Awards ceremony, the National Book Award-winning graphic novel March: Book Three, written by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, illustrated by Nate Powell (Top Shelf Productions/IDW) won four awards — the Michael L. Printz Award for young adult literature, the Excellence in Nonfiction award, the Coretta […]
People, Etc.
Avideh Bashirrad has been promoted to vp, deputy publisher, fiction at Random House, reporting to Susan Kamil. Kelsey Horton has joined Delacorte Press as associate editor. Previously, she was an associate editor at Katherine Tegen Books. At Doubleday, Michael Goldsmith has been promoted to assistant director of publicity and Mark Lee moves up to associate publicist. Matthew Martin has been promoted to the new position of svp, deputy general counsel at Penguin Random House. Target‘s February Club Pick is All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda. Mystery Writers of America announced the slate of Edgar Award nominees, with the winners to be […]