Two years ago he said he was finished, but now friend and writer writer Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza says that Gabriel Garcia Marquez is closing in on a new novel. “He has four versions of it. He told me that he was now trying to get the best from each of them.” But a spokesperson for the Carmen Balcells Agency replied, “There is nothing, for the moment.”Guardian
BookScan UK: Sales Down Again
For the last week, sales revenues tracked through Nielsen BookScan in the UK were 6.9 percent below the same week from a year ago, “the biggest weekly decline since July” (when the comparison was to last year’s Harry Potter release.) For the year, however, sales are just slightly negative, down 0.8 percent.Bookseller
Academic and Educational Books Keep Wiley in the Black, Even as Trade Falls 12%
Wiley reported sales of $432 million for their fiscal second quarter of fiscal year 2009, up 2 percent from a year ago, with earnings of .67 cents a share, up 14 percent. CEO William Pesce reports that “we generated solid top-line growth in our global STMS and higher education businesses. Professional/Trade revenue was down, reflecting the combined effect of weak retail sales and the comparison to last year’s strong first half.” Because of that diversity, the company remains “cautiously optimistic that full-year revenue growth will be in the mid-single digits, excluding the unfavorable effect of foreign exchange.” But with almost […]
Canada's Thomas Allen Postpones Spring Until Fall
Similar to the recent move by Atlas & Co., Canada’s Thomas Allen Publishers is “postponing” most of their planned spring 2009 releases until the fall. The company “generally releases only 10 to 12 books per year,” the National Post notes. President Jim Allen says, “We are postponing a few of our spring titles due to the fact that we’re not ready to publish them. This happens from time to time in book publishing for a variety or reasons, and given the literary nature of our list and the economic climate we’re in, we have to be absolutely certain that we […]
What Does It Mean for Reviews? Freeman to Run Granta
John Freeman–the No. 1 “top reviewer” tracked at the Publishers Marketplace Book Review Index (with 576 reviews noted since October 2002 (yes that’s about 125 books a year, with 65 percent positive reviews, and just 7 percent pans)–is taking a staff job. As of January he will join Granta Magazine as their American editor, reporting to Alex Clark. “Working closely with Granta’s headquarters in London, he will develop an ambitious program of author events and provide a vital connection between the magazine, US-based writers and Granta’s North American and Canadian readership.”
The Best of The Best Of
In our second not-necessarily-annual compilation, we’ve put together best books of 2008 lists from the Amazon.com (their top 25), the Boston Globe, the Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times, New York Magazine, the New York Times, the National Book Awards finalists, PW, Salon, Time magazine, the Washington Post, plus lists from critics Michiko Kakutani and Janet Maslin to determine the consensus picks from among all the lists. Of course we could have told you the winner this summer, when critics across the land made it clear they were prepared to love Robert Bolano’s 2666–whether or not the public was eager […]