Preliminary (unaudited) data shows BookCon attendance nudging up to 21,500 people from 20,000 at past shows. The early number for Book Expo attendees — including media, but excluding exhibitors — was 8,260 (which usually includes about 1,200 press). But regular readers know we’ve been having a lot of trouble making sense of their numbers. We…
Book Fairs
AAP: Nadler Talks Tough On Tech Antitrust, and Judiciary Opens Investigation
Chair of the House Judiciary Committee Representative Jerry Nadler appeared at the Association of American Publishers’ annual meeting on Wednesday to accept their annual distinguished public service award. Nadler’s brief remarks came ahead of the announcement at the end of the day of the committee’s broad “bipartisan investigation into competition in digital markets.” The committee…
The Book Expo Schedule, Simplified
Book Expo’s schedule software remains as difficult as ever, so we are back with our handy single schedule spreadsheet. Listed day-by-day, hour-by-hour, it puts all of the various common convention events, educational sessions and stage events in one place. Just visit publun.ch/2019bxsched. (It does not include specialized tracks of limited interest, like the new slate…
London: So Many Debuts, So Few Big Deals
We’ve run out of polite synonyms for modest and soft, so we’ll start our final look at the dealmaking patterns leading into the London Book Fair with what jumped out as most distinctive. Debut fiction is always a closely-watched market bellwether, particularly as the mainstream fiction market appears to languish. The good news is that…
Deal Counts Are Modest Heading Into LBF, With Only Moderate Investment In Debut Fiction
With dealmakers converging on the London Book Fair next week, it’s time for us to bring our traditional dose of statistically-based reality to the frenzy of pre-Fair deals coverage. As always, this is preliminary, with two more business days of deal reports to log before we provide you fuller analysis next Tuesday. So far, the…
People: Holt’s EIC Comes From Within
Following the departure of Gillian Blake for Crown Trade in early December, new Holt publisher Ben Schrank has filled the editor-in-chief position from within the company. Executive editor Serena Jones is being promoted to editor in chief. Metropolitan Books publisher and co-founder Sara Bershtel moves up to senior vice president (with Maggie Richards being named…