Starbucks has picked the book they will feature in their stores this holiday season–Daren Simkin’s THE TRAVELER, illustrated by brother Daniel Simkin–and for the first time, the coffee company is co-publishing the book instead of just buying copies from the publisher. Their partner is Farrar, Straus, which has had the book in their catalog, though without noting the Starbucks association, which was saved for the announcement. But Starbucks got the first look at the book, and FSG was enlisted as a partner thereafter. Bill Clegg at the William Morris Agency, which helps scout properties for Starbucks, says that the agency […]
Awards
Business Winner: When Markets Collide
Mohamed El-Erian won the FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year award for WHEN MARKETS COLLIDE: Investment Strategies for the Age of Global Economic Change, “a timely alert to the fundamental changes taking place in today’s global economic and financial systems – and a call to action for investors who may fall victim to misinterpreting important signals.” CEO of Goldman Sachs Lloyd Blankfein says the book “provides invaluable context for the global financial crisis and does so in an extremely accessible and compelling way.” FT editor Lionel Barber says the fourth winner of their award “is lucid and prescient in […]
National Book Award Finalists
Fiction nominees range from the 81-year-old Peter Matthiessen for a book the AP calls “an 890-page revision of a trilogy of novels he released in the 1990s” to debut novels from Rachel Kushner and Salvatore Scibona. The winners will be named November 19: FictionAleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project (Riverhead)Rachel Kushner, Telex from Cuba (Scribner)Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country (Modern Library)Marilynne Robinson, Home (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)Salvatore Scibona, The End (Graywolf Press) NonfictionDrew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf)Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (W.W. Norton & Company)Jane Mayer, The […]
Booker Bulletin: Adiga's White Tiger Wins
Per the traditional pattern, the favorite never wins. Debut novelist Aravind Adiga’s THE WHITE TIGER (William Morris’s big book at the London Book Fair in 2007 if you’ll recall) won the Booker Prize, just announced in London. Published by Atlantic Books in the UK (their first Booker victory) and just released in trade paperback by Free Press in the US, Adiga prevailed over bettor’s favorite, Sebastian Barry’s THE SECRET SCRIPTURE. It’s the third debut novel to win the prize. Chair of the judges Michael Portillo remarked, “The novel undertakes the extraordinarily difficult task of gaining and holding the reader’s sympathy […]
Booker Tonight; German Book Prize Prize
The naming of the Booker Prize winner tonight in London should spark some activity tomorrow at the Frankfurt Book Fair. This is an unusual year, though, with low sales for all six shortlisted titles. All together, the six books have recorded lifetime sales of 32,342 copies via Nielsen Bookscan. Only Linda Grant’s The Clothes on Their Backs is available in paperback, and that book has sold the most of the six. Bookmakers Ladbrokes has Sebastian Barry’s THE SECRET SCRIPTURE as their 2-to-1 favorite, followed by Steve Toltz’s A FRACTION OF THE WHOLE at 6-to-1, but the bettor’s favorite generally does […]
Nobel Bonus for Norton: Economics Prize to Krugman
Paul Krugman has won the Nobel for economics for “his analysis of how economies of scale can affect trade patterns and the location of economic activity.” In the citation, the Academy says: “What are the effects of free trade and globalization? What are the driving forces behind worldwide urbanization? Paul Krugman has formulated a new theory to answer these questions. He has thereby integrated the previously disparate research fields of international trade and economic geography.” Norton published Krugman’s THE CONSCIENCE OF A LIBERAL in fall 2007.AP