Time Zone Shift We’re off to Frankfurt later today, and the news world obliges with lots of international stories. Regular Lunches will continue as usual, and we may or may not have additional postings and pictures available via the PublishersMarketplace.com home page. What’s never clear from year to year is whether we’ll wind up serving Lunch on American or European time, or just whenever we can get to the computer long enough to file. International Sogides Sold to Quebcor Quebcor is buying Quebec’s largest book publisher Sogides, on undisclosed terms, to bolster its book division (which includes distributor Quebec-Livres 14 […]

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Smith’s Better than Worst, But UK Retail Still Suffers Traditional UK book retailers continue to report weakness heading into the fall selling season. WH Smith’s earnings report for their fiscal year, through the end of August, was destined to be an improvement over their huge 148 million pound loss from a year ago. Showing net income of 46 million pounds, overall sales still fell, by 3 percent to 1.11 billion pounds. Book sales were down 3 percent in the pre-Potter half of the year, and still down 1 percent in the Potter-powered half. Inauspiciously, same-store sales in the first six […]

Schedule Note There will be no Lunch served tomorrow; we’ll return on Friday. Chose Your Hotspot: Frankfurt, or Omaha If the selling process for the financial advice book from former Morgan Stanley insurance stock analyst Alice Schroeder, drawing on her access to master investor Warren Buffett, goes ahead as planned, a small number of publishing executives may be heading to Frankfurt by way of Omaha next week. Agent David Black is said to be telling participating publishers that bidding has reached $7 million, with qualifying suitors hoping for an invitation to fly out and meet with Buffett — even though […]

Booker to Banville The Booker Prize continues its predictable unpredictability as for at least the fourth consecutive year, judges “surprised” everyone in bypassing the favourites, led by Julian Barnes for ARTHUR AND GEORGE, giving the award to Irish author John Banville for THE SEA. In case you haven’t been keeping track, the betting favourites-turned-losers from the previous few years have been David Mitchell (2004), Monica Ali (2003), and William Trevor (2002). But at least they are consistent; in the same period, only one favourite at the preliminary longlist stage (David Mitchell) has even made the shortlist. (Early leaders who were […]

Random Speaks Echoing Harper’s move this May to establish an in-house speakers bureau, the Random House Publishing Group announced today an affiliation with the Boston-based American Program Bureau. Random House and Ballantine authors confirmed as joining the lecture agency’s roster include Salman Rushdie, Gail Sheehy, Jonathan Harr, ADD expert Edward M. Hallowell M.D., Matthew Pearl, Lisa See, and Valerie Hemingway. Random’s executive director of publicity and public relations Carol Schneider will coordinate the publisher’s involvement in the program. While Harper positioned their initiative as a revenue generator, Random is looking to their alliance primarily for promotion. Schneider says, “There’s a […]