Skyhorse announced a deal to acquire conservative publisher Regnery from Salem Media Group, which amusingly they chose to release through the New York Times. (But it worked, and got the paper to cover an otherwise small acquisition.) Regnery is projecting sales of just $10 million for 2023, and will operate as an imprint of Skyhorse. They bring a backlist of over 1,500 titles. Skyhorse president and publisher Tony Lyons tells the NYT candidly that his books “are provocative and dangerous and disturbing,” which he sees as an argument why stores should carry them, to “encourage dialogue and debate.” The transaction […]
B&N Union Square Employees Stop Work on Pre-Holiday Afternoon
Unionized workers at the Barnes & Noble in Union Square walked off the job at 2 PM on Friday, December 22 to protest “the company’s failure to return on economic portions of the contract amid their highest sales season.” After joining the RWDSU in June, employees have met with management to negotiate a contract throughout the fall. According to the union, last week, ceo James Daunt came to the bargaining table. In a release, the union stated, “If the company wants to live up to James Daunt’s vision of a well trained, knowledgeable sales team, and a shopping experience for […]
People 12/21
Holiday Sales Come Down to Final Week
For the sales week ending December 16, Circana Bookscan reports weekly sales of 28.6 million units, falling behind last year’s sales of 29.5 million units in the same week. But with Christmas on Monday, booksellers should see another very full week of sales leading into the holiday. As Circana Bookscan analyst Kristen McLean wrote a week ago, “Overall we expect the close of 2023 to look very much like 2022 — two shallower ‘Super Saturdays’ rather than a single high peak.” Unit sales are expected to run about 3 percent below last year’s totals. For the eight weeks of sales […]
The Very Best of the Best Books of 2023
The votes are all in and we’re ready to celebrate the consensus very best books of 2023, based on a broad collection of lists. James McBride’s The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store was both novel of the year and overall book of the year, followed in the voting by Safiya Sinclair’s How to Say Babylon and David Grann’s The Wager, which tied for nonfiction book of the year. Farrar, Straus outperformed this year with five titles among the top 20. Independent publishers were represented by newcomers Red Tower and Yale University Press, as well as Grove/Atlantic. Sinclair’s memoir was first […]
Distribution: Five New Publishers for IPG
The phazelFOZ Company’s print titles are now distributed by Independent Publishers Group in the US and Canada. Momentum Press is now distributed in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Oceania by Independent Publishers Group’s academic and professional division, Eurospan. Starting on January 1, Hummingbird Press will be distributed by IPG worldwide. Also on January 1, Eurospan will distribute Zophorus Books worldwide and Manohar Books worldwide, excluding South Asia.