At Random House Children’s, Stephanie McKinley has been promoted to senior digital developer; Kelly Mcgauley is now senior marketing manager, trade marketing; Mallory Matney moves up to associate manager, marketing operations and consumer show; and Alissa Nigro has been promoted to marketing associate, trade marketing. At Chronicle Books, Taylor Norman has been promoted to editor for children’s. Jamie Real has joined as assistant managing editor for children’s (she was managing director for Litquake); Sandy Frank has joined as junior designer. Daniel O’Brien has joined the American Booksellers Association staff as a member relationship manager, serving the SIBA, SCIBA, NCIBA, PNBA, and MPIBA regions. He takes over from […]
Bestseller Radar
Handbook for Gaming Sales
The ABA has admitted belatedly that Lani Sarem’s Handbook for Mortals “should not have made it onto the Indie Bestsellers list” last week (where it was listed as the No. 2 young adult fiction hardcover) and “it isn’t appearing this week.” The organization added, “We’re always reviewing our procedures to improve them, and, following this, we are refining the way we do things.” That leaves USA Today as the only organization to have stood by including the book on a bestseller list, ranking it at No. 34 last week. Separately, Thu-Huong Ha at Quartz has done some good follow-up, and after first […]
NYT Removes New YA Book From Bestseller List, Following Indications of Planned, Bulk Purchases
The New York Times reissued their Young Adult hardcover bestseller list for sales through the week ending August 19 early Thursday evening to eliminate Lani Sarem’s Handbook for Mortals, which had debuted at No. 1, after an online campaign (including input from indie booksellers) helped to establish what appears to have been programmatic bulk orders placed through strategic stores, specifically designed to put the book on the NYT’s list. Jordan Cohen at the NYT told us, “After investigating the inconsistencies in the most recent reporting cycle, we’ve decided that the sales for ‘Handbook for Mortals’ do not meet our criteria […]
Bestsellers, Charts, and Some Facts
Most days we focus on trying to make our own news and analysis as accurate, informed and comprehensive as possible and leave others reporting on the trade to their own approaches. But with a lot of attention on Amazon’s new Charts — too much, probably, since this is a new merchandising initiative for Amazon’s customers, on their site, tilted towards their house product and preferred formats — PW has made the same basic error two weeks in a row, so it’s worth making things clear for our readers at least. The new weekly Charts are not “the company’s first move into tracking […]
New Amazon Charts Show What People Are Reading
Amazon has launched a “reimagined weekly bestseller list” that combines data from across all of their formats — print, ebook, and digital audio. A new Top 20 Most Read list aims to show “what customers are really reading and listening to by looking at the average number of daily Kindle readers and Audible listeners” (of course they have no data on print readers). A companion Top 20 Most Sold list does include print sales data as well (and they still count pre-orders and sales together). On the downside, the “sold” list still has Amazon’s own thumb on the scale, counting digital products […]
NYT Book Review Editor Explains Expanded Coverage Plans
New York Times Book Review editor Pamela Paul spoke at a Publishers Advertising and Marketing Association luncheon event on Wednesday, previewing forthcoming changes to how books are featured in the newspaper. Paul said their books coverage will be “expanding and becoming more strategic,” an initiative that includes a consolidation of the three desks that handle books (publishing business news, daily reviews, and the weekly review), the hiring of more staff editors and reviewers, and a redesign of The Book Review. That process will eliminate some of the “duplication” of the past, such as the practice of reviewing the same book twice, in the […]