Alessandra Bastagli has joined Nation Books as editorial director, filling the position vacated earlier this year when Carl Bromley moved to The New Press. Most recently she has been digital features editor at Al Jazeera America, after working at Free Press until it was merged into the Simon & Schuster Publishing Group in fall 2012. Meg Cassidy has left Simon & Schuster, where she was a publicity manager, to pursue freelance work in publicity, culinary pr, and event planning from Portland, OR. She can be reached at mcassidy9@gmail.com. At their annual meeting later this month, the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) will honor […]
Bone Clocks Tops Amazon’s September List
David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks is Amazon’s September Spotlight pick, and Michael Pitre’s novel Fives and Twenty-Fives (already a featured Indie Debut and Indie Next book) is their featured debut. Two of our Publishers Lunch Fall/Winter Buzz Books make the list — Matt Richtel’s A Deadly Wandering and Tana French’s The Secret Place — along with these titles: Cosby: His Life and Times, Mark Whitaker What If?, Randall Munroe I’ll Drink to That, Betty Halbreich, Rebecca Paley Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, Jeff Hobbs Stone Mattress, Margaret Atwood The Paying Guests, Sarah […]
Suge Knight’s Book Due from Dey Street In 2015
Following Page Six’s insinuation connecting Suge Knight’s shooting with his long-in-gestation book, we can confirm the manuscript is alive and well. Harper director of publicity Shelby Meizlik confirms to PL that the book, now tentatively titled YOUR PAIN IS MY JOY: 100 Rounds with Suge Knight, is scheduled for publication by their Dey Street imprint in summer 2015, with Carrie Thornton editing. Neil Strauss, who collaborated with Marilyn Manson, Dave Navarro and Jenna Jameson on their books, is co-authoring the book. Originally sold to Riverhead back in 2002, the project was resold to HarperCollins last year with Riverhead recouping first proceeds. In […]
The Super Seuss Business
The Wall Street Journal writes in-depth on the Dr. Seuss franchise, so much a staple of Penguin Random House that it was cited a number of times in the company’s financial report earlier on Friday. The peg is the September 9 publication of a second collection of “lost” magazine work, Horton and the Kwuggerbug and More Lost Stories, following on an earlier 2011 collection that hit No. 1 on the NYT bestseller list. As a result Random House Children’s announced a first printing of 250,000 copies. The publisher said they have sold 600 million copies of Dr. Seuss books in 17 […]
Briefs: September Costco Pick; Amis Breaks with German, French Publishers; Maze Runner Movie
The September Pennie’s Pick at Costco is The Monogram Murders: The New Hercule Poirot Mystery, by Sophie Hannah. The Guardian reported that two of Martin Amis‘s longstanding international publishers — Hanser in Germany, and Gallimard in France — declined to publish his newest novel, The Zone of Interest, set in a fictionalized Auschwitz. Another German publisher has not been secured yet, but Calmann-Levy will publish the book in France in 2015. Editor Deborah Kaufmann says she is “delighted to be starting a long relationship with Martin Amis.” The Guardian notes, “He said that it was his understanding that Gallimard’s rejection was due to […]
Penguin Random House Has Softer Sales (Probably) and Strong Earnings In First Half
Penguin Random House plus the separately-owned Random House Germany together had sales in the first half of 2014 of €1.461 billion, with operating EBITDA of €159 million. (The Santillana trade publishing business was added July 1, after the close of these results.) It is the first time that the combined business has reported sales for the first six months of the year, and while the company did not disclose direct comps to prior performance, sales look to be down by about €40 million, or 2.7 percent, likely from the Random House side (which had Dan Brown’s Inferno in 2013, and […]