Breaking the pattern we so carefully documented earlier on Tuesday, the favorite has won the Booker Prize for just the second time in the past nine years. Julian Barnes, nominated three times before for the award, won on his fourth try for THE SENSE OF AN ENDING. And Knopf, which had moved up the book’s publication date from January 2012 to October 5, announced it will go back to press for an additional 40,000 copies, on top of the initial 36,000 first printing. (Among outlets monitored by Nielsen BookScan, Barnes’ hardcover edition has approximately 2,500 copies through last Saturday in […]
Awards
Looking to Tonight’s Booker
Julian Barnes is in the running for the Booker Prize for the fourth time, this year for THE SENSE OF AN ENDING, and he heads into tonight’s awards ceremony as the odds-on favorite. Which is often not a good thing. As our handy chart below shows, over the past eight years the bettor’s choice has only won once. (We stopped at 2004, since 2003 was the year that the Booker web site at least appeared to post Yann Martel’s victory a week ahead of the ceremony.) The announcement is due at 4:48 Eastern (US) time today. Year Favorite Winner 2010 […]
Lauren Myracle’s Book Is Withdrawn From the National Book Awards
After it became clear last week–in less than straight-forward fashion–that Lauren Myracle’s young adult book SHINE was erroneously named as a National Book Award finalist, the title has now been withdrawn from the competition and no longer appears on the National Book Foundation’s website. Myracle says in a release from publisher Amulet that she “was asked to withdraw by the National Book Foundation to preserve the integrity of the award and the judges’ work” on Friday and agreed to do so. In recognition of the error and, we imagine, the sloppy process of dealing with that mistake, the NBF “has […]
Updates: An Extra National Book Awards Finalist; More on Amazon’s 47North
It turns out that Wednesday’s announcement of the National Book Awards was not entirely error-free, as in the early afternoon a sixth nominee in the Young People’s Literature category – CHIME by Fanny Billingsley, published by Dial – was added to the list. “We made a mistake, there was a miscommunication,” executive director of the National Book Foundation Harold Augebraum told the LA Times. “We could have taken one of the books away to keep it five, but we decided that it was better to add a sixth one as an exception, because they’re all good books.” Updating news from […]
National Book Award Nominees; New Literature Prize Proposed In UK
The National Book Award nominees were announced on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Think Out Loud program. The winners will be named on November 16. Fiction Andrew Krivak, THE SOJOURN (Bellevue Literary Press) Tea Obreht, THE TIGER’S WIFE (Random House) Julie Otsuka, THE BUDDHA IN THE ATTIC (Knopf) Edith Pearlman, BINOCULAR VISION (Lookout Books) Jesmyn Ward, SALVAGE THE BONES (Bloomsbury) Non-Fiction Deborah Baker, THE CONVERT: A Tale of Exile and Extremism (Graywolf) Mary Gabriel, LOVE AND CAPITAL: Karl & Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution (Little, Brown) Stephen Greenblatt, THE SWERVE: How the World Became Modern (Norton) Manning Marable, MALCOLM […]
People, Etc.
Eileen Lawrence will join Little, Brown Books for Young Readers as executive director of marketing on October 19. Previously she was senior executive director of advertising, promotion and creative services at the Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group. At Headline, John Wordsworth has joined as editor, focusing on science fiction and fantasy titles. Previously he was an editor at John Blake Publishing. In addition, Ben Willis will join as publicity manager starting November 7. Previously he was a senior press officer at Transworld. Cover to Cover Booksellers founder Nicky Salan, 77, died yesterday at her home in San Francisco. She founded the […]