Second Drop for S&S CBS reported quarterly results this morning, with sales at Simon & Schuster dropping for the second consecutive quarter, down 12 percent to $201.6 million, with operating income down 32 percent to $14.6 million. The company says “best-selling titles… did not match contributions from prior year titles” (which is exactly what they said last quarter). CEO Carolyn Reidy says that “if it weren’t for the comparison to last year, I’d say we had a darn good quarter. (THE SECRET, still on bestseller lists though without the same velocity as a year ago, comprised $53 million of worldwide […]

LAT Winners, and Festival The LAT Festival of Books began Friday night with the naming of the LAT Book Prize winners in 10 categories. Among the honorees: Fiction: Andrew O’Hagan, Be Near Me First Fiction: Dinaw Mengestu, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears Full list of winners The LAT’s book blog has multiple posts on various festival events. Jacket Copy In other awards news, and in transition to the item below, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Nebula Awards were also announced on Saturday, with Michael Chabon winning for his novel THE YIDDISH POLICEMAN’S UNION. Audible Highlights Sci-Fi Audible has […]

Angel to Lead (and Expand) Faber in US As was being murmured in the halls at the London Book Fair, Fourth Estate editorial director Mitzi Angel will relocate to New York to become publisher of Faber, Inc. in the US as part of an initiative to expand that imprint “with its own singular identity” as well as build a program of joint world English acquisitions with Faber and Faber the UK. (Originally established as the US branch of the British Faber and Faber, a majority interest in the operation was sold to Farrar, Straus in 1998.) But FSG will continue […]

Another Jump for Amazon Even with the bar set pretty high, Amazon met or exceeded analysts’ consensus expectations with first quarter sales of $4.13 billion, up 37 percent, and net income of $143 million, up 30 percent from a year ago. Yet the company’s earnings guidance for the next quarter stayed the same, even as they foresee another strong rise in sales of between 34 percent and 41 percent. That renews investor concerns about the company’s margins and is taking the stock down today after a sharp run-up over the past two months. Of course publishers only care about what […]

Son Decides to Publish Last Nabokov Novel Vladimir Nabokov’s son Dmitri has told Germany’s Der Spiegel that he has finally decided to ignore his father’s instructions to burn his final manuscript, THE ORIGINAL OF LAURA, and will instead have it published. Dmitri said, “I’m a loyal son and thought long and seriously about it, then my father appeared before me and said, with an ironic grin, ‘You’re stuck in a right old mess – just go ahead and publish!'” Dmitri has called the manuscript “the most concentrated distillation of [my father’s] creativity.” Guardian blog Thomas Nelson Cuts Staff The religious […]