At this year’s National Book Awards ceremonies on November 19, the National Book Foundation will give its Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to Maxine Hong Kingston “in recognition of her outstanding achievements as a writer of fiction, memoir, and nonfiction.” Publisher Barney Rosset will receive the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community. Executive director Harold Augenbraum says in the announcement, “This year’s distinguished honorees broke new ground in American literary publishing. Kingston exposed the great story of American immigration to a new, rich blend of fiction, memory, folk-tale and political idea. Rosset opened a […]
First Lady Bios, First on Kindle
Globe Pequot is releasing biographies of the two potential First Ladies Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama as Amazon Kindle exclusives in advance of the print releases. Elizabeth Lightfoot‘s Michelle Obama: Grace and Intelligence in a Time of Change is available electronically today, with an announced print release date of November 26. Alicia Colon’s Cindy McCain: Elegance, Good Will and Hope for a New America will be available on Kindle on September 15, but “will only go to print if John McCain wins the election.” Amazon release
Palin Book Moves to Tyndale
Tyndale House has taken over distribution of Epicenter Press’s biography SARAH: How a Hockey Mom Turned the Political Establishment Upside Down as of today. They are shipping what they say is a 250,000-copy printing (under a new ISBN of 978-1-4143-3050-1). Epicenter had been fulfilling through Graphic Arts Center Publishing and Ingram Publisher Services.Release
People and Prizes
* At Jossey-Bass, Karen Murphy has been promoted to senior editor for the business trade group. At Other Press, Megan Feulner has been promoted to associate publicist. Gregory Cowles has been promoted to preview editor at the New York Times Book Review. He’s been at TBR since 2004. New Regency “continues to expand and enhance its motion picture division” with new hires that include Michelle Kroes as director of feature and literary development. She will “focus on mining the literary community for film projects as well as acting as the contact for east coast talent.” Kroes has been a scout […]
Current Events Books that Don't Stay Current
This WSJ article must have been pretty easy to compile, spinning off of book titles that didn’t stay relevant for long, such as: Why the Real Estate Boom Will Not Bust — And How You Can Profit From ItSpoiling for a Fight: The Rise of Eliot SpitzerThe Fred Factor: How Fred Thompson May Change the Face of the ’08 Campaign Of course I bet we could come up with far more discredited article titles from the past couple years of the Journal…. One interesting stat: “Nonfiction sales in the U.S. have risen steadily to 311 million books in 2007 from […]
How Much Will Reed Pay You to Buy Their Magazines?
Reports continue to indicate that Reed has had to put together a financing package to cover most of the purchase price of the Reed Business Information unit in order to get someone to “buy” it. (In this case, “buy” likely means agree to make a small down payment and take the big debt package Reed is offering, with the properties as collateral.) They have had to supplement a $1.26 billion package of staple financing from a coalition of banks with another $330 million in loans from their own balance sheet in vendor financing. Which probably means that, while bids were […]