Monday Oprah Winfrey selects Charles Dickens’ GREAT EXPECTATIONS and A TALE OF TWO CITIES as her new book club picks, revealed early when the AP purchased a copy of Penguin’s special edition $20 paperback with Oprah Book Club logo on the cover. While Penguin’s edition is the official one, multiple classics publishers have the opportunity to benefit from the selections, including Barnes & Noble. Penguin’s official ebook edition is priced at $7.99, as previously reported, though ebook editions are easily obtainable for anywhere from free to ninety-nine cents (per book).
Awards
People, Awards, Announcements, Etc.
Courtney Young has been promoted to senior editor for Portfolio, Sentinel, and Current. At HarperCollins, David Sweeney has been promoted to vp, special markets responsible for mail order, retail, wholesale and premium, taking on added responsibility of leading the premium sales team. Alexandra Harris‘s ROMANTIC MODERNS: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper, won the Guardian First Book Award. Melville House has agreed to publish the winner of the new Paris Literary Prize, to be given by the Paris bookstore Shakespeare and Company to a previously unpublished writer working in English. The web site for […]
Penguin Will Finish Year With New Oprah Pick
Next Monday, December 6, Jonathan Franzen will appear on the Oprah Winfrey Show–and the host will announce her new book club pick. It’s a big fat paperback from Penguin, with an unknown page count but a listed shipping weight of 1.9 pounds. The print book has a list price of $20, but the ebook currently has an agency price of only $7.99.
People, Etc.
Matthew Benjamin is moving to Touchstone on December 13 as senior editor, reporting to Trish Todd. He has been at HarperCollins, most recently as senior editor at William Morrow. At Touchstone, he will focus on acquiring men’s interest, celebrity, pop culture, sports, health, and investigative journalism. Allison Lorentzen is joining Penguin Books as editor. SHe was most recently an associate editor at HarperCollins. She will be acquiring both fiction and nonfiction titles, as well as working closely with Kathryn Court on Viking and Penguin acquisitions. The Lambda Literary Awards will be the new home for the Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists’ Prize, […]
Jaimy Gordon and Patti Smith Win NBA Awards
Last year the books that had sold the best won the two main National Book Awards but this year provide pointed contrast, with the novel that had sold the least paired with the nonfiction book that sold the most. Jaimy Gordon’s just-released LORD OF MISRULE from McPherson, with three-digit print sales in its first two weeks on the market, prevailed in the fiction category. Meanwhile, Patti Smith’s award-winning nonfiction title JUST KIDS had already outsold the rest of the nonfiction field combined. Paperback rights to Gordon’s book were sold to Vintage earlier this month (with her next book sold separately […]
Warren’s Debut Wins Governor General’s Award; Costa Shortlists
Dianne Warren‘s debut novel COOL WATER (Harper Canada/Phyllis Bruce Books) won the Governor General’s Award for fiction. As the National Post points out, Kathleen Winter’s debut novel ANNABEL was the only book nominated for all three of Canada’s major literary prizes, but has not won any of the honors.Full GG winners The Costa Book Awards shortlists for five categories were just announced in the UK. Winners will be named on January 5, with the overall Costa winner to be picked on January 25.Among the candidates: First Novel Witness the Night, by Kishwar Desai Coconut Unlimited, by Nikesh Shukla The Temple-Goers, […]