The newest deal for Reese’s Book Club and Hello Sunshine will direct fans to purchase recommended titles from the Google Play store. They are pairing with Google Assistant and its universe of smart devices; the verbal instruction, “Hey Google, read with Reese’s Book Club” will be answered with commentary and reviews from Reese Witherspoon and personalized reading recommendations and other features. In its early days Reese’s Book Club struck a very successful exclusive relationship with Audible. As we reported exclusively in February when the club launched its new app and dedicated website, the Audible partnership was ended. Hello Sunshine ceo […]
Deals
Harry Stories
Prince Harry’s book deal with Penguin Random House will provide a steady stream of rumors and stories. Over the weekend, the Daily Mail reported — based on what seems to be a single source — that, plausibly, the overall deal was for four books and, less plausibly, that it includes a second memoir to be published “when his granny dies.” Lawyers for the prince told the paper that their claims were “false and defamatory” and a statement indicated, “Prince Harry has no plans to publish a second memoir after Queen Elizabeth’s death.” There was no direct denial of an agreement […]
Initiatives: Bloom Books Adds New Author
Bloom Books, the Sourcebooks line that offers a “joint publishing model” and started with EL James as “keystone author,” has announced their next partnership: fantasy romance author Scarlett St. Clair. They will have full rights to her entire backlist starting this fall, featuring the Hades x Persephone series, and will publish her new original novel, KING OF BATTLE AND BLOOD on November 30. A TOUCH OF DARKNESS, the first in her self-published series, is a TikTok driven success, recording print sales of approximately 58,000 copies this year, through Lightning Source (with ebook sales figures not available). Sourcebooks says, “National chains, […]
Initiatives: S&S Submissions Guide
Simon & Schuster launched a Submission Selector, a database of S&S editors searchable by category and imprint. In an email to agents, ceo Jonathan Karp wrote, “The idea for this site came out of a conversation that our publishers were having related to remote work and how to make certain that agents ‘know’ all of our editors…. Our hope is that this database will simplify the submission process for you at Simon & Schuster as you quickly and easily find the perfect match for your projects.”
Second Quarter Deals Remain Very Strong
HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray told an investor conference in June that the publisher is, “Being aggressive in terms of buying books. We’ve seen the book pie grow, maybe 15 percent. And so our response, which is part opportunistic and part defensive, is to be aggressive in buying right now.” Our exclusive analysis of deal transactions in the second quarter of 2021 confirms that behavior, across the industry. In the first quarter, US deal volume was 19 percent higher than a year ago (and 21 percent higher than the recent four-year average). For the second quarter, deal volume again registered 18 […]
Forthcoming: Egan’s New Novel
The Candy House, Jennifer Egan‘s “hotly anticipated sibling novel” to her Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad, will be published by Scribner on April 5, 2022 (and by Little Brown UK’s Corsair). It features “entwined characters and plot points that overlap with A Visit from the Goon Squad….” Egan says it, “Follows a number of its peripheral characters into their own futures and pasts to create an independent work with a new set of preoccupations and center of gravity, but equal affinity for technology, humor, and structural freedom.”