FICTION Debut Jancee Dunn’s first novel, IN BETWEEN DAYS, the humorous and nostalgic story of a 30-something New Yorker who is forced to relive her 1980s past when she moves back into her childhood home after getting dumped by her husband and leaving her job, to Jill Schwartzman for Villard, in a two-book deal, by David McCormick at McCormick & Williams Literary Agency (world English). Former private school headmaster Selden Edwards’s debut FIN DE SIECLE, about a 1970s rock star dislocated in time back to turn-of-the-century Vienna, where he encounters some of notable people of the time and meets his […]

Because 20 Isn’t Quite Enough — Nor Was $100k Granta announced their second list of the 21 best American writers under age 35 (though 5 were born outside the US) last night. They picked: Daniel Alarcon; Judy Budnitz; Kevin Brockmeier; Christopher Coake; Anthony Doerr; Jonathan Safran Foer; Nell Freudenberger; Olga Grushin; Dara Horn; Gabe Hudson; Uzodinma Iweala; Nicole Krauss; Rattawut Lapcharoensap; Yiyun Li; Maile Meloy; ZZ Packer; Jess Row; Karen Russell; Akhil Sharma; Gary Shteyngart; and John Wray. And author James Patterson increased the awards from his Page Turner Awards five-fold in this, the second year. The top $100,000 grant […]

Harlequin’s Bad Year Ends, and They Say It’s Improving Every publisher based in another country with a big American division faces the problem of trying to explain in numbers why business was ok until you take into account the ever-weakening dollar but no one makes the process more elaborate than Harlequin parent Torstar. Perhaps because the company has suffered from a variety of challenges for a while now, you pretty much need an advanced degree in excuses to really understand their earnings releases. They allow for currency differences; they translate “underlying” revenue changes; they calculate what would have happened if […]

Moonves Like S&S In yesterday’s conference call about the CBS earnings report, chief executive Leslie Moonves said there was “no need” to sell Simon & Schuster and he expects it to be part of CBS “for a long time to come.” Reuters Audible’s Report Card Audible trimmed their loss for the fourth quarter, down to $.7 million (from $2.2 million the year before), on sales of $23.3 million. Revenue for the full year was $82 million, up 30 percent, with a net loss of $8.4 million. Release Personnel News Stephen Roxburgh has been promoted to publisher of Boyds Mills Press. […]

Strong Finish for S&S Sales rose 7 percent in the fourth quarter for Simon & Schuster, to $252.5 million, helped by the Oprah-powered YOU: On a Diet, and operating income increased by the same percentage, to $38.9 million (including a bad debt allocation against the AMS bankruptcy). Parent company CBS records full fiscal-year sales at Simon & Schuster of $807 million, up 6 percent from $763.6 million in fiscal 2005, attributed to stronger frontlist and “higher distribution fee income.” Operating income was $68.5 million for the year, up four percent from $66 million in 2005. Since this marks the first […]

Penguin Finishes Well Full-year sales at Penguin rose 44 million pounds, for “underlying growth” of 3 percent, to 848 million pounds, or $1.664 billion. (The group’s total was lifted by the transfer of the Brady Games video game imprint into DK from Pearson’s professional publishing unit, and the acquisition of the Index direct-sales business.) Operating profit rose 6 million pounds, to 66 million pounds overall, or $130 million, though this was calculated as 22 percent growth in “underlying” profits. Penguin gets about half of its profits from the US, where profits in dollars rose nicely, but that effect is diluted […]