In a Winter Institute keynote, futurist author Brian David Johnson walked booksellers through the process detailed in his book, The Future You: Break Through the Fear and Build the Life You Want, while also fielding specific questions from ABA president Allison Hill. Johnson urged booksellers to start by giving themselves permission to create what he called their “future story,” by getting really specific about what they want for their businesses as the world seeks to normalize after the pandemic. Then, he said, write it down. The remaining steps: Find your people: Who are your partners in creating this future? Share […]
Events
Barack Obama Kicks Off Winter Institute; Brene Brown Moved to Saturday Due to Weather
Barack Obama kicked off the opening of the Winter Institute at 10:40 this morning, after a montage reviewing the “extraordinary journey” of the past year, as ABA president Alison Hill put it in her later remarks. Obama’s short recorded message thanked booksellers for “expanding my mind, filling my spirit, and broadening my sense of possibility,” saying that, “what happened to me, you’re providing for so many other kids and teenager and adults around the world.” Booksellers, he said, aren’t selling only books but “knowledge, discovery, wisdom, empathy, access to thoughts and worlds that readers have never experienced before. And by […]
People, Etc.
Jayme Boucher joins Hachette Book Group on January 20 as director of their speakers bureau. Established in 2009 in partnership with Greater Talent Network, Hachette Speakers Bureau relaunches this year as an in-house venture, under Boucher’s leadership. She was a founding member and senior leader of the Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau. Jessica Renheim has been promoted to senior acquisitions editor at Crooked Lane Books and Alcove Press, acquiring crime and book club fiction. Selihah White has joined Catapult, Counterpoint, and Soft Skull Press as publicist. Joy Fowlkes has joined The Gernert Company’s Los Angeles office as podcast agent, representing […]
International Thriller Writers Board Petitioned to Resign Over Handling of Sexual Assault Complaint
More than 100 members of International Thriller Writers are calling for the resignation of the organization’s board in a new petition, “per the ITW bylaws,” following charges that the board failed to take members’ sexual assault complaints seriously. The petition says that, ” If needed, we will submit a quorum of 10 percent of ITW member signatures” to call for election of a new board among active members. ITW debut author chair Laurie Chandlar had resigned her post in protest last week, after she and author Penni Jones “brought serious concerns to the ITW board regarding a male author’s behavior […]
Kobo CEO Tamblyn’s Tips for Raising eBook Revenues
It’s only appropriate that a Book Industry Study Group (BISG) annual meeting Friday that opened with predictions of continuing tight markets for book paper and manufacturing concluded with Kobo (“often thought of as ‘Kobo-Who-We-Wish-Were-Bigger-In-the-US'”) ceo Michael Tamblyn running down six ways to sell more digital product — and retain readers’ attention — with better metadata. His biggest and most important suggestion/ask — which has been a staple of some of my own speeches for years — was, “Add series data. Every damn time.” As Tamblyn noted, series represent a whopping 52 percent of their ebook sales. Yet it is “one […]
PEN Panel on Call-Outs, Correctness, and Culture Wars
PEN America hosted a timely panel on March 5, “Writing Wrongs: Call-Outs, Correctness, and Culture Wars,” falling just days after queer black author Kosoko Jackson responded to Twitter criticism of his YA novel by canceling its publication. Readers faulted the book for using genocide as the backdrop to a love story, among other sensitivity issues—and Jackson, who has himself served as a sensitivity reader for other titles, agreed. On the PEN panel: authors Ayad Akhtar, Francine Prose, and Meredith Talusan; former NY Review of Books editor Ian Buruma; Slate writer Inkoo Kang; and New York Times critic-at-large Wesley Morris. Suzanne […]