Laura Lippman is living her secret dream. It started in earnest when “an editor she describes as ‘a cold-blooded professional assassin.’ He told her she needed to work on her writing.” She says, “the secret, secret, almost never-stated endgame was … ‘I’m going to quit my day job and be a novelist.'” The first time she told her husband, “I told him I thought I could write full time. And I also told him that I thought I would be a New York Times best seller. I was really drunk, sitting at my kitchen table.” Last year, 10 years after […]
Greenwood Publishing Office to Close
Following the license of Greenwood Publishing Group’s imprints and titles to ABC-CLIO, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will close Greenwood’s Connecticut office and layoff approximately 150 employees as a result, a source tells Westport Now. That source says layoffs will begin in early December. The owner of the office building “said he understands that some workers have been offered jobs in Santa Barbara, Calif., and in Colorado.”
How Many Sony Readers?
As we’ve pointed out previously, Sony sells their Reader in more markets than Amazon’s Kindle, and has been equally reluctant to disclose any data about sales. In the flurry of stories following the announcement of their new model, president of their Digital Reading Business Steve Haber does tell the San Diego paper, “we’ve sold hundreds of thousands of Readers and millions of electronic books.” The paper says Haber “takes exception to recent published reports that said the Reader sales are only a fraction” of the wild guesses about Kindle sales. SD Union Tribune Speaking of Amazon, The Register notes that […]
UK Publishers Think Thrifty
We’re headed into uncharted waters in gauging the effect of economic crisis on the consumer publishing business, and the Guardian looks for some signs. UK chain Waterstone’s “has seen 200% increases in sales of two titles about keeping chickens in recent weeks.” And Weidenfeld & Nicolson publishing director Alan Samson is looking for threads of string: “Books on saving string, thrift in World War Two – publishers would be well advised to check out their backlist and see if they’ve got these sorts of books.” More broadly, Viking editorial director Joel Rickett says, “We’re thinking more widely about the kind […]
Bertram's Stabilizes?
Managing director of UK wholesaler Bertram’s Michael Neil assures the Bookseller that “conversations have concluded and we are now trading normally” with publishers following the cancellation of some credit insurance policies for their parent company Woolworth’s. But since the company never acknowledged a problem in the first place (“From our perspective and from our customers’ there hasn’t been any disruption to our service. Our warehouse is full of books and sales have been better than ever”) that’s only worth a certain amount. The financial condition of Woolworth’s a whole remains perilous. Separately, the FT reports today (and Woolworth’s confirms) that […]
Surprise Giller Nominees
“Gasps of surprise” greeted yesterday’s announcement of the nominees for Canada’s Giller Prize, since many of the nominees are little-known. They are: Anthony De Sa’s debut story collection, Barnacle LoveMary Swan’s first novel, The Boys in the TreesMarina Endicott’s debut Good to a Fault (from new publisher Freehand Books)Joseph Boyden’s Through Black SpruceRawi Hage’s Cockroach National Post