Publishers Lunch

Oprah Picks Wiesel As you’ve no doubt already heard, Oprah’s latest book club pick is Elie Wiesel’s NIGHT. Farrar, Straus indicates that they have printed a total of one million copies of the book in paperback and hardcover. AP NBCC Nominees The National Book Critics Circle picked a very quiet news weekend to announce the nominees for their awards. Additionally, Pushcart Press founder Bill Henderson will be given a lifetime achievement award, and Wyatt Mason will be honored for his reviews. Complete nominees: Fiction E.L. Doctorow, The March Mary Gaitskill, Veronica Andrea Levy, Small Island Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me […]

Cairns Out at Bowker, and More Personnel News and Announcements In the latest shakeup at R.R. Bowker, president Michael Cairns will leave the company at the end of January. Cairns, who came to Bowker in 1999, took over after Reed Elsevier sold Bowker to Cambridge Information Group in 2001. CIG’s Andy Snyder is leading the search for a replacement and Bowker executive Gary Aiello will oversee operations in the meantime. Cairns can be reached at mpcairns@sprintmail.com (see the PM.com contact database for full information). Hyperion senior editor Kelly Notaras is joining Colorado-based multi-media publisher Sounds True as editorial director beginning […]

Decent Holiday for Borders, As Books Rise More — And Private Equity Groups are on the Prowl Our traditional rule of thumb is that when Borders manages to match Barnes & Noble’s performance in a given time period, the No. 2 chain is doing about as well as they can. Which means Borders had a good holiday period, reporting a quarter-to-date same-store sales increase of 2.2 percent at their domestic superstores, or $800.5 million in all. For publishers the news is even better, as book sales alone rose 6 percent compared to a year, while music sales continue to fall. […]

Frey: Some Facts Consumers posting on Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club message board indicate that Random House is providing refunds to buyers of A MILLION LITTLE PIECES who call their customer service line to complain in the wake of the unanswered charges made by The Smoking Gun earlier this week. One correspondent posts: “Tell them you wanted fact not fiction.… They are very nice and will tell you how to return the book for a full refund… “ James Frey will appear on the Larry King Show tonight, though a spokesperson indicates to the AP that he “would not be interviewed […]

New Releases: Sachar and Bremer Louis Sachar’s first big book since 1998’s Holes releases today with an announced 500,000-copy first printing. SMALL STEPS is billed as a companion to Holes, but the Seattle PI says “don’t read too much into that. The two books have little in common apart from sharing a couple of characters.” Sachar says “I think (the new book) definitely stands on its own.” Despite the big printing, the paper says pre-pub notice was slim: “The countdown, however, has generated surprisingly little word of mouth, possibly because Sachar is so tight-lipped about his projects that even his […]

Frey Accused of Gross Fabrications The Smoking Gun went looking for some mug shots of A MILLION LITTLE PIECES author James Frey, which turned into an extensive examination of his account of his years as a drug addict, alcoholic and criminal. After searching police and criminal records in multiple states, and interviewing numerous law enforcement officials and Frey himself, TSG concludes he “demonstrably fabricated key parts of the book” and “wholly fabricated or wildly embellished details of his purported criminal career, jail terms, and status as an outlaw ‘wanted in three states.'” Besides accounts they call “patently dishonest,” TSG says […]