After a premature wave of reports declaring the Kindle Fire a raging success before any consumers tried it, the press is now moving to the expected next phase of coverage: discovering the problems of a first-generation device. Today’s NYT has it both ways: Fire “is less than a blazing success with many of its early users” but “it would be foolish to underestimate Amazon.” Those poor early buyers “seem to have bought it on a mixture of faith and hype.” Gosh, where would that have come from? The news in the article is that, “in less than two weeks, [Amazon […]
More Votes for The Year’s Best Books
We already listed the Washington Post‘s Top 10 books of the year, but their Sunday special section also lists their 50 notable fiction and nonfiction picks, along with their favorite kids books, photobooks, and more. The New Yorker‘s critics share their favorites of the year, about 40 books in all. The Seattle Times asked reviewers to “nominate the best book published in 2011 they reviewed for us, and the best book published in the past year that they read but didn’t review.” That yields 21 works of fiction and 11 nonfiction titles. The top vote-getters were The Sense of an Ending by […]
Agency Lawsuits Will Be Handled In New York
Agency publishers got a measure of what passes for good news in today’s climate on Friday. A judicial panel on multidistrict litigation decided on Friday that the plethora of class action suits alleging conspiracy to fix ebook prices will be consolidated under the jurisdiction of the Southern District of New York. The panel said it “will serve the convenience of the parties and witnesses and promote the just and efficient conduct of this litigation.” The panel noted that “nearly all defendants, including all publishing defendants, are located in New York City, giving it a nexus to the allegations.” And “all […]
People, Etc.
Hilary Redmon will join Ecco as executive editor, focusing on non-fiction, starting on December 19. She has been a senior editor at Free Press. Literary agent Emmanuelle Morgen will join Stonesong on January 5, representing adult and children’s fiction, including women’s fiction and romance, historical fiction, and young adult fiction, and nonfiction in the areas of psychology, pop science, self-help, and memoir. Morgen has been at Judith Ehrlich Literary Management. In the rapidly-consolidating Dutch publishing world, NDC/VBK will put its imprints Contact, Mouria and Augustus together with the two Amstel imprints LJ Veen and Atlas to form a new publishing […]
Briefs: Indie Bookscan Holiday Sales Up 15.5 Percent; Bloomsbury’s New Literary Events Line; and More
The ABA announced that member in-store book sales over the Thanksgiving holiday long weekend, as tracked by Bookscan, increased 15.5 percent over the same week in 2010. Sales in store websites powered by ABA IndieCommerce also increased by 60 percent for the same weekend (plus Cyber Monday) as compared to last year. Ann Patchett’s STATE OF WONDER and Laura Hillenbrand’s UNBROKEN topped the Indie bestseller lists for hardcover fiction and non-fiction, respectively, in 2011. Indie Bestseller Lists page Also from the ABA, this year’s Winter Institute 7 in January will feature a new One Institute, One Read program. Tying in […]
Darcie Chan, Recluse No More
Last week the NYTBR featured Darcie Chan, author of the self-published success The Mill River Recluse, in the Inside the List column, where she noted “I would still love to have a book traditionally published, be it Recluse, my second novel (currently in progress) or a future work.” Now the WSJ has a long feature on her path to success, and continuing discussions with publishers via agent Laurie Liss at Sterling Lord Literistic. Unfortunately the article suffers from some NYT-esque pejoratives and errors of fact, so the account of publisher discussions is open to some interpretation. “A few major publishers” […]