Last year’s publication of Harper Lee’s Go Set A Watchman meant big business not just for HarperCollins but also for Grand Central, which has licensed the mass market paperback rights for To Kill A Mockingbird for many years. According to Nielsen Bookscan, that mass market edition of TKAM sold almost 567,000 units in 2015 (and since 2001, the service has tracked sales of approximately 4.924 million units of that edition). That license is about to expire and will not be renewed, according to an email from Hachette Book Group to retailers seen and reported on by the New Republic. A […]
New Releases/Forthcoming
Briefs: Wimpy Kid 11, Booker International Candidates, and More
Book 11 in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series will go on sale on November 1 in the US and “at least 20 international territories.” Last year was the first coordinated global release for Jeff Kinney’s series, and Israel and Korea have joined as new partners for the simultaneous laydown of book 11. Abrams says, “More on-sale publishing partners are expected to be announced soon.” The Booker International Prize announced its longlist, the first since the award changed to honor current releases and split the prize among authors and translators. The 13-book longlist includes The Story of the Lost Child […]
Briefs: Schumer’s ‘Lower Back Tattoo’ Publishes August 16; Zola Books Gets More Funding; and More
Amy Schumer‘s book will be published by Gallery on August 16 — and it has retained the proposal name, THE GIRL WITH THE LOWER BACK TATTOO. Funding Zola Books closed another round of funding last week. The new round adds something under $3.4 million since the company’s last announced funding in 2013. (That last round was extended beyond the original close to add funds for their purchase of Bookish assets.) The new round was led by previous investor Charles Dolan, founder of Cablevision. Zola hopes to expand the recent rollout of their Everywhere Store widget enabling print and ebook sales by other sites. Corporate […]
Briefs: Hachette Book Group Sues Mottola: Lord of the Rings Coloring Book; and More
Hachette Book Group is suing music executive Tommy Mottola, seeking to recover a $150,000 advance for a memoir they say he never completed. The deal was announced in late 2010 and the manuscript had been due in 2012. The filing is not publicly available yet, but Page Six says “the publisher claims Mottola reneged on finishing the manuscript by April 2012 — even though Hachette offered twice to extend the deadline.” Forthcoming Following the death of author Umberto Eco, Italian publisher La Nave di Teseo (The Ship of Theseus) will release a collection of magazine essays he wrote for Italian weekly […]
Scholastic, Little Brown UK Will Publish Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Play Script on July 31
Scholastic and Little Brown UK will publish the script book of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by Jack Thorne, an adaptation and continuation of JK Rowling’s series, just after midnight on July 31. The play premieres on London’s West End on July 30 and features Potter as a 35-year-old parent, and was based on an original new story by Rowling, Thorne and John Tiffany. Scholastic’s Arthur A. Levine Books imprint will publish the rehearsal script — which the press release positions repeatedly as “the eighth Harry Potter story” — as a hardcover in the US and Canada, while Little Brown UK […]
Briefs: Harper Pairs with Temple Hill, Final Days for St. Mark’s, and More
Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey’s film production company Temple Hill Entertainment has a new publishing agreement with HarperCollins in which the producers will “generate original ideas and opportunities for books and series,” that Harper will publish under the Temple Hill Publishing banner. Petersen Harris at Temple Hill will serve as their vp, publishing (he ran the Penguin Development Group before joining the production company in 2014, and is the son of Susan Petersen Kennedy and Bruce Harris), and the producers were represented by Writers House in the publishing deal. Temple Hill has produced adaptions of both YA (The Fault in Our Stars; Paper Towns, The […]