Hodder’s Coming to America, With Help from S&S UK publisher Hodder Headline once tried to buy Simon & Schuster through their parent company WH Smith, and the company has long been thought to be looking to buy a US publisher. Now they’ve done the next best thing or — depending upon how you look at it an even smarter thing — in announcing the start-up of Hodder Headline USA and partnering with S&S to handle sales, warehousing, billing, fulfillment and customer service for the new unit. S&S will also provide office space and a variety of other support services, including […]

Finishing a Busy Week The latest installments in a very full week of deal reports: the auction for a young fiction writer’s Russian bestseller (and more big first fiction sales), big sales for a bestselling celebrity diet doctor’s Thin Commandments and a different doctor’s solution to hormone health, more on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and even a book by the fruit expert recently profiled in the New Yorker, a new house for Bobby Flay’s next tie-in cookbook, and still plenty more (plus, Friday’s usually bring lots of reports). Plus, as ever, live postings during the day, an optional daily […]

Fellow Reviewers Amazed At NYT McDougal Error For more on the NY Times’ “huge blooper” in their review of Susan McDougal’s book “and why it’s been so ignored,” visit the current “Book Babes” journal at the Poynter Institute’s web site. The Babes are freelance reviewer and journalist Ellen Hetzel, and St. Petersburg Times book editor Margo Hammond. Hetzel says, “What seems amazing is that a review about such a sensitive topic as Whitewater would scoot through the system without someone shepherding it more closely — checking the clips or asking a national editor to take a look before it went […]

Big Proposals Coming Your Way New deal reports remain robust, including a big UK sale for a book about the “father of surgery” that will be up for sale to US publishers shortly (and a big UK novel purchase where the publisher has already turned down one US pre-empt), a Paris Review editor’s first novel and other literary fiction sales, film rights to a big fall novel, a book from the mother of Backstreet Boy AJ McLean, “the world’s first Jewish humorous feminist academic novel,” and still plenty more. Plus, as ever, live postings during the day, an optional daily […]

More Big Sales Already we’ve got almost 20 deals that didn’t make last night’s weekly wrap-up, including a significant deal for a first novel, Book Sense 76 author Mike Perry’s latest, a Harvard MBA’s big sale for a book teaching older women how to develop a marketing plan for getting married, the Six Feet Under tie-in, film rights for Life of Pi, more chick lit, a look at the famous rivalry between Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain, the latest from Miles Harvey, a French bestseller, the new face of spirituality in America, and still more — as well as for […]

The Latest Deals As predicted, last Friday brought many new intriguing deal reports, including the second big book about Perdita/Mary Robinson (this one from the same team behind the bestselling book about her friend Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire), a big book about the literary James family, a fresh look at the Brothers Grimm and where they really got their fables, a simple new plan to battle heart disease, controlling childrens’ moods through better eating, and lots more (about 60 in all since the last Lunch Weekly). Join us as a member at PublishersMarketplace.com and see them all-plus you can search […]