Margaret Stead has been promoted to publisher of Zaffre and new literary imprint Manilla, coming at the end of the year from Bonnier Books UK. Matt Phillips becomes publisher of non-fiction imprints Blink and John Blake. Awards Romance bookstore The Ripped Bodice is launching an award for excellence in romantic fiction sponsored by Sony Pictures Television, with winners to be named on Valentine’s Day 2020. Up to 12 winners will receive a cash prize of $1,000, as well as a $100 donation in their name to the charity of their choice. Penguin Random House has offered a second round of […]
Macmillan Splits the Library eBook Baby: A Small Concession, and Broader Windowing
Macmillan is the latest big publisher to announce an adjustment of their library ebook terms, this time in a letter from ceo John Sargent to authors and agents. Their policy has a twist to balance protecting sales with “ensur[ing] that the mission of libraries is supported”: Exactly one copy of every ebook will be available to each library system for purchase upon publication for $30, which is half the current library price, and that one copy will be available in perpetuity, for unlimited one-at-a-time lends. But any additional copies of their new-release titles will be windowed for 8 weeks after […]
People, Etc.
Editorial director of All Points Books Adam Bellow will resign from St. Martin’s at the end of 2019 (after joining the publisher in fall 2016). Bellow said, “I’ve been exceptionally happy and productive at St. Martin’s. But after 30 years of honing my skills in corporate publishing I am ready to go out on my own. There is tremendous ferment in political and intellectual media and opportunities abound for entrepreneurial ventures. I’ll be making a further announcement in the fall, but for now I am very pleased to be able to transition into this new phase of my career with […]
Bookselling: Another Amazon Store, and a Replacement Barnes & Noble
Further to our report earlier in July that Amazon is hiring staff for a new, unspecified physical store in Detroit (either a Books store or a 4-Star outlet), the company is now similarly hiring for another new store in Houston. Separately, in line with earlier indications, Barnes & Noble has opened a new roughly 14,000-square-foot store at Cityplace in Woodbury, MN, taking the place of a larger, nearby store that closed on Tuesday.
Booker Longlist All But Omits Americans
As the tipsters suggested when we first published ahead of the official release, the Booker Prize longlist all but entirely spurns work by Americans for the first time since they started accepting nominations from beyond the Commonwealth in 2014. One candidate, Lucy Ellmann, is American-born, though she has lived in the UK since she was a teenager, now residing in Scotland, and is classified as Anglo-American. She’s in contention for Ducks, Newburyport, a 1,000-page monologue composed almost entirely of a single sentence. (It was published in the UK by Galley Beggar Press; the US edition is forthcoming from Biblioasis.) Up […]
Forthcoming Booker Longlist Said to Shut Out Americans For the First Time Since Rule Change
Since the Booker Prize first started accepting nominations from beyond the Commonwealth in 2014, American authors have claimed a healthy portion of the annual longlist: Four slots in 2014, five in 2015 and 2016 (when Paul Beatty became the first American to win the prize); four in 2017; and 3 in 2018. When Crankstart took over from The Man Group as the prize sponsor earlier this year, there was renewed hope from the UK that they would get their prize back and not have to face competition from the US, though the Booker Foundation indicated there would be no changes. […]