USA Today has soft-launched a revised and expanded books section on the newspaper’s web site, complicated with a dedicated sub-domain, books.usatoday.com. Among the features, their bestseller list has a graphics-enriched consumer-friendly new presentation (and is featured on the books home page as well). Importantly for publishers and publicists, the Book Buzz column will now act as a daily blog, with contributions from across the USA Today books department staff. Book reviews have a consistent new page design featuring the jacket and click-to-buy links at Amazon, BN, IndieBound and iTunes, and those review pages pull in reader reviews from GoodReads and […]
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If Jesse James Came to BEA, Would He Eat the Foie Gras Or Just Steal It?
The NYT offered such a fresh, informative take on BEA and our industry that we’ve excerpted the merry mix of metaphors for you in this brief recap: The NYT suggests “there is a Wild West quality to the book business these days, and it is on full display at BookExpo America,” recalling the gold rush era, I guess, when the precessors of “the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group gave a party at a French bistro in Midtown, where waiters passed around foie gras on toast.” (If only HarperCollins had positioned their rolled rare roast, also passed by hired servants, as gluten-free.) […]
Buzz Reviews: The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides
Review by Alex Shephard Graduation is supposed to signify an end and a beginning, the transition between the ivory tower and the “real world.” But in The Marriage Plot, his first novel since Middlesex won the Pulitzer Prize almost a decade ago, Jeffrey Eugenides follows three newly-minted graduates to question the idea of a clean break between these two periods. In the process, he renders familiar insecurities, frustrations, and transformations into the most convincing and authentic portrait of post-graduate life in recent memory. Like the thousands of students who are receiving their diplomas in June 1982, the trio of students […]
Eisler’s Next John Rain Novel to Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer
At our Publishers Launch Conference Wednesday afternoon, Barry Eisler announced that, rather than self-publishing, his next John Rain novel THE DETACHMENT will be published by Amazon’s new mystery/thriller imprint Thomas & Mercer in both digital and print formats. “What Amazon has offered is everything that was so great to me about self publishing on the one hand, but everything you want from traditional publishing,” including marketing and distribution. “I get the best of both worlds,” he added. Amazon is also paying Eisler an advance, one “that was comparable to what St. Martin’s was offering in the deal I ultimately decided didn’t […]
Buzz Reviews: The Boy in the Suitcase, by Lene Kaaberbol & Agnete Friis
Review by Sarah Weinman The Scandinavian crime boom, which started with Henning Mankell and exploded thanks to Stieg Larsson, shows no sign of abating. Jo Nesbo’s now bestselling authors, James Patterson folded Liza Marklund into his team of co-writers, and publishers are pinning high hopes this summer and fall on books from Jussi Adler-Olsen, Lars Kepler, and Mons Kallentoft, among (so) many others. But the sleeper of the bunch, and among the best crime novels of the year, comes from the collaborative alchemy of internationally bestselling fantasy writer Lene Kaaberbol and children’s book author Agnete Friis, scooped up by Soho […]
Amazon Wants You To Know It Has a New Kindle, Too
With Kobo and Barnes & Noble having announced actual new models of ereaders, Amazon announced a new offer of their own on Tuesday night. For people who need their “special offers” on the go, now there’s a Kindle 3G version priced at $164. Kindle director Jay Marine said in the release that the 3G Special Offers, ready to ship on the day of the announcement, was created “in response to customer requests.” Among the forthcoming offers is “$1 for a Kindle book, choose from thousands of books including Water for Elephants and the Hunger Games trilogy.” In other Amazon news, the company […]