Sourcebooks announced a joint venture imprint partnership with another successful self-published author, pairing with Jeffrey Mason, creator of the line of Hear Your Story guided storytelling journals. This year alone Mason’s books have sold well over 700,000 copies in the US as tracked by Circana Bookscan, and Sourcebooks says his line has sold over 2 million copies worldwide. The agreement covers world rights and audio. Sourcebooks editor Ariel Curry is working on the line. Starting in 2018, Mason created the series “as a response to his father’s battle with Alzheimer’s,” beginning with Mom, I Want to Hear Your Story and […]
New Books Publishing November 19
This week’s fiction releases include novels by Haruki Murakami and Janet Evanovich. It’s a big week for nonfiction, with new memoirs by Bill Clinton, Cher and Keke Palmer (not to mention Josh Brolin and Jaleel White), plus works by Robin Wall Kimmerer and Alan Lightman. Also publishing this week is Brightly Shining by Ingvild Rishøi, translated from Norwegian by Caroline Waight, excerpted in our Buzz Books 2024: Fall/Winter sampler. 21 works of fiction https://bookshop.org/lists/new-fiction-publishing-november-19 13 works of nonfiction https://bookshop.org/lists/new-nonfiction-publishing-november-19 From Buzz Books https://buzz.publishersmarketplace.com/ We consult a number of sources in compiling […]
Listening to Lipskar
Open Road’s latest behind-the-scenes in publishing podcast is a recorded conversation from September between Simon Lipskar at Writers House and Open Road ceo David Steinberger. Lipskar discusses learning about the business of the business in his early days as an agent: “All I did was go to lunch and ask questions…. What I learned was nothing surprising, but it all had to do with budgets being based off of gross receipts. That was it. There was nothing more to it. So everyone’s budgets were being built off of gross receipts, and executives’ bonuses were contingent upon delivering on budget. So […]
Obituary: Arthur Frommer
Travel guide writer and publisher Arthur Frommer, 95, died on November 18 from complications from pneumonia. After going to law school and serving in the US Army, he wrote Europe on $5 A Day and founded Frommer’s to publish guidebooks in 1957. Frommer’s daughter Pauline Frommer is currently the co-president of Frommer Media and editorial director of Frommer’s Guidebooks. “Throughout his remarkable life, Arthur Frommer democratized travel, showing average Americans how anyone can afford to travel widely and better understand the world,” she wrote in a statement. “I am honored to carry on his work of sharing the world with […]
NBN Will Close; Clients Can Move To S&S
National Book Network, the book distributor founded in 1986 by Jed Lyons to handle distribution for his company Rowman & Littlefield as well as other publishers, is closing. Lyons sold Rowman & Littlefield’s academic publishing business to Bloomsbury earlier this year and then sold Sundance Newbridge to Lerner Publishing Group. Lyons still owns Globe Pequot, which will be distributed by Simon & Schuster in North America beginning in the second half of 2025. NBN has also made a deal for its publisher clients to move over to S&S, under the same financial terms in their existing contracts, though Lyons told […]