FictionPeter Matthiessen, Shadow Country (Modern Library)NonfictionAnnette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello (W.W. Norton & Company)Young People’s Literature Judy Blundell, What I Saw and How I Lied (Scholastic) PoetryMark Doty, Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems (HarperCollins). We started sales tracking the winners online as soon as they were announced last night. (Amazon is the first column; BN.com the second): MathiessenStart: 1,321 1,416Now: 265 92 Gordon-ReedStart: 1,100 1,282Now: 317 167 DotyStart: 51,418 38,416Now: 3,391 40,790BlundellStart: 23,200 63,008Now: 3,378 50,756Some quotes from the coverage: Gordon-Reed: “It’s sort of wonderful […]
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Hachette Book Group has filled the open chief operating officer slot with the hiring of Kenneth Michaels, who joins the company on January 5. He was most recently svp of global business process management for the McGraw-Hill Companies. CEO David Young notes, “he consistently achieved impressive results across many areas of the business including IT infrastructure and strategy, new business development, distribution initiatives, operations, inventory, and leadership development.” He will “focus on finding opportunities for greater efficiency throughout the areas of our business that will report to him: distribution, facilities, fulfillment, IT, managing editorial, production, and strategic publishing operations.” Harper […]
Obama Book Club Selects: Tom Daschle
He’s the likely nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, and the latest Obama-backed author to crack the top 20 online, at No. 17 on Amazon’s list morning. (In this case, Senator Obama had already recommended the book, with his endorsement featured on the cover.)
More on Nabokov's LAURA
Dmitri Nabokov “has finally broken his silence about the contents” of the late Vladimir Nabokov’s unfinished THE ORIGINAL OF LAURA, which is set for publication rather than the burning originally called for by the author. And he shows the index cards on which it has written–which have been stored in a Swiss bank vault–to the BBC’s cameras. He told the BBC, “My father told me what his most important books were. He named Laura as one of them. One doesn’t name a book one intends to destroy. He would have reacted in a sober and less dramatic way if he […]
Barnes & Noble Earnings Preview, and More Financials
Shares in Barnes & Noble touched all-time lows in Tuesday’s trading with the company’s market cap below $800 million after dropping almost 6 percent–and the decline has continued in early trading today. On Thursday the retailer will report quarterly earnings. Their guidance forecast a loss of 10 cents to 15 cents a share, but analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expect a loss of 16 cents per share, on sales of $1.17 billion. BAMM reports on Friday, and Borders releases results on Tuesday, November 25 after the market closes. At current prices, the market value of Barnes & Noble, Borders, Books-a-Million […]
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At Picador, David Rogers and Sam Douglas have both been promoted to editor. Sam worked at Henry Holt for two years before joining Picador in April 2006. Among his titles at Picador are Ron Rash’s Chemistry and Other Stories, a PEN Faulkner finalist, and Beth Helms’ Dervishes, a Sargent First Novel Prize finalist, as well as a broad range of fiction and nonfiction reprints. Sarah Shumway has joined the Katherine Tegen Books imprint at Harper Children’s as senior editor, acquiring primarily middle-grade and YA fiction. She had been at Dutton Children’s. Don Weise has been named publisher of Alyson Books. […]