A French news service share statistics on the big French fall publishing season, “an important ritual on the French literary circuit. Every year, by the end of August, French booksellers get agitated, critics get irritated, and writers become nervous as a profusion of titles hits the bookshelves.” The total count of 676 novels is down slightly from last year’s 727 works. Of those, 210 are works in translation. They come from 98 publishers in all, and even the biggest houses have only a small share: “Gallimard and Fayard have 18 novels each, Le Seuil 15, Grasset 14, Le Rocher 13, […]
People
Sarah Sper will join Simon Spotlight Entertainment as editor on September 23. She has been acquiring and editing pop culture and celebrity-driven titles at HBG’s Center Street. Amy Scholder has been hired as editorial director of the Feminist Press at CUNY. She has worked at Seven Stories Press, Verso Books, Serpent’s Tail and City Lights Publishers.
Oprah's Telle?; BN's Pick
There’s good circumstantial reason to believe the online speculation covered on Galleycat and elsewhere that David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is a prime candidate as the selection for Oprah’s Book Club to be announced this Friday. Based on the scant metadata displayed by online booksellers, we know that it’s a recently published HarperCollins book available only in hardcover at $25.95 and in a Harper Luxe large-print edition. The best giveaway comes from Amazon’s Canadian site, where they also indicate the page count of 576, the same as Sawtelle. Amazon.ca lists the publisher as “unknown” to try and avoid […]
On DFW
As covered this weekend, author David Foster Wallace, 46, was found dead in his Claremont, CA home on Friday night, having hanged himself. Pomona College, where he was the Roy E. Disney professor of creative writing at Pomona College, will hold a memorial service. Little, Brown publisher Michael Pietsch tells the NYT, “He had a mind that was constantly working on more cylinders than most people, but he was amazingly gentle and kind. He was a writer who other writers looked to with awe.”LATNYT The NYT followed today with a second obituary, this time with some insights from Wallace’s father […]
People: Keating Joins Endeavor, and More
Endeavor continues to build up its presence in the book business with the hiring of Dutton editor-in-chief Trena Keating as an agent in the New York office. Keating says: “As an editor I always loved helping authors craft ideas, and I’m eager to dive deeper into this entrepreneurial aspect of the publishing process. Richard [Abate] and I have long had a close and collaborative business relationship and it’s been great fun to watch him create the literary department at Endeavor, so I’m excited to be a part of his growing team. I’ve had extraordinary colleagues on the publishing side, particularly […]
Lunch Weekly for Monday, September 15
Deal Reports Just e-mail to deals@PublishersMarketplace if you aren’t using the online form linked below. Report a deal using the online form The Key As usual, the handy key to our Lunch deal categories. While all reports are always welcome, those that include a category will generally receive a higher listing when it comes time to put them all together. “nice deal” $1 – $49,000 “very nice deal” $50,000 – $99,000 “good deal” $100,000 – $250,000 “significant deal” $251,000 – $499,000 “major deal” $500,000 and up FICTION Debut NYT bestselling author of Kabul Beauty School Deborah Rodriguez’s KABUL COFFEE […]