FICTION Debut Brendan McNally’s GERMANIA,  a first novel about the last days of the Third Reich, when Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect and friend, embarks on a foolhardy rebellion, aided by a former child star turned enemy assassin, ending up in Flensburg, where the surviving Nazis lose themselves in dreams of a bright and impossible future, to Colin Fox at Simon & Schuster, in a good deal, by Larry Weissman at Larry Weissman Literary (world). Susan White’s BOUND SOUTH, in which three women struggle to find their place in contemporary Atlanta, examining race, class, gender, and religion in a land where […]

NBCC Winners At the NBCC awards last night, “a solid majority of nominees showed up, including such high-profile writers as novelists Richard Ford and Dave Eggers and historian Taylor Branch” the AP reports, but most of the favorites didn’t win: Fiction: Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss Nonfiction: Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution Biography: Julie Phillips, James Tiptree, Jr. Autobiography: Daniel Mendelsohn, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million Poetry: Troy Jollimore, Tom Thomson in Purgatory Criticism: Lawrence Weschler, Everything That Rises AP The Devil Needs a Haircut? Radar notices that an […]

Wiley: Sales Rise, Profits Fall Wiley announced third quarter sales of $297 million, up 7 percent from a year ago, with adjusted net income of $32 million, down from $34 million a year ago. In the US, the professional/trade division rose two percent, to $103 million. The company says backlist sales and “the strong performance of technology publishing, the sale of electronic rights and lower sales returns contributed positively to these results.” They took a bad debt provision of $5 million against the AMS bankruptcy. Release Personnel News Harper has hired Margot Schupf as group svp and associate publisher for […]

Marquez Resumes Memoir Gabriel Garcia Marquez celebrated his 80th birthday yesterday and “told friends that he has begun writing his second volume of memoirs” — a happy contrast to his statement last year that he had “run out of gas” for writing. The report comes not from Marquez himself, but friend and collaborator Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza. LAT More on AAP/Microsoft/Google Microsoft’s Tom Rubin made one small modification to the published text of his speech at yesterday’s meeting of the publishers’ association, underscoring in the preamble that he didn’t mean to “attack” anyone — before attacking Google as planned. Among the […]

Endeavor Confirms NY Literary Expansion Weeks after the first report on Gawker, Endeavor has confirmed its hiring of agent Richard Abate from ICM to create a New York-based book division, operating out of their Carnegie Hall Towers office. Variety says the “plan [is] to grow a full-fledged business that will likely be staffed by at least five agents,” indicating that one motivation is “to put the growing agency on the ground floor of film-friendly literary material that can be serviced to movie and TV clients and be the catalyst for packages.” But that ground floor can get mighty dusty when […]

Bad News Barnes Barnes & Noble surprised Wall Street by announcing a sharply reduced earnings forecast for the coming year (approximately 30 percent or more below what analysts were expecting) along with same-store sales predictions of “flat to slightly positive for the year,” even with the new Harry Potter book. Margins are under pressure from multiple fronts: Their discounted Member prices are “negatively impacting both sales and gross margins as the unit sales growth has not yet offset the amount of additional discounts. In addition, gross margin will continue to be compressed by the highly competitive bookselling environment.” Nonetheless, CEO […]