This week’s fiction releases include new titles by Lev Grossman and Alexander McCall Smith, while Liz McNeil and Rosemarie Terenzio and James Patterson publish new biographies. Also out this week are new titles by Hyeseung Song, Ruby Todd, and Wendy Grolnick, Benjamin Heddy and Frank C. Worrell, all of which are excerpted in our Buzz Books 2024: Spring/Summer sampler. 28 works of fiction https://bookshop.org/lists/new-fiction-publishing-july-16 17 works of nonfiction https://bookshop.org/lists/new-nonfiction-publishing-july-16 From Buzz Books https://buzz.publishersmarketplace.com/ We consult a number of sources in compiling our weekly lists and PM members can see our […]
HBG Restructures Workman; Cuts Two GCP Imprints While Expanding Fiction
Hachette Book Group announced a number of changes internally on Monday afternoon, which include an expected restructuring and full integration of Workman Publishing, along with both cuts and hiring plans at Grand Central, plus a number of new executive promotions. Changes at Workman have been long expected, since the $240 million acquisition (which closed on September 23, 2021) included a pledge to retain all of the company’s 300-plus employees for three years. (A number of longtime Workman executives retired shortly thereafter.) The company declined to indicate how many Workman division employees were laid off, though some of those people confirmed […]
People 7/15
Reisman Says Stepping Back from Indigo CEO Role Was a “Two-Year Misstep”
After a rough pandemic, a cyber attack that shut down digital and in-store operations in 2023, and turnover in its executive ranks, Indigo CEO Heather Reisman noted in a podcast taping that the company has had a “tough four years,” the Canadian Press reports. Reisman stepped back from the company’s CEO role in 2022 and retired last year, a “wrong decision” that she said cost the company $120 million (CA). She said that the pandemic cost Indigo $160 million (CA) in cash, and the combined hit took a toll on the chain. “That’s a lot of money for any retail […]
Former Hachette UK Executive Doyle Files Discrimination Complaint
Ursula Doyle, former publisher of Hachette UK’s Fleet imprint, has filed a discrimination complaint against the company. On a fundraising page for legal fees, Doyle explains that she resigned after facing online harassment from colleagues for publishing Kathleen Stock’s 2020 “gender critical” book Material Girls. Doyle writes that she was a “target for abuse by colleagues in the book industry, who have used social media to accuse me of – among other things – bigotry, prejudice, transphobia and hatred, often tagging in my employer, Hachette, and Hachette’s Pride network.” According to Doyle, a hearing will take place in August. Doyle […]
Forthcoming: New Zora Neale Hurston Novel
Amistad will publish a previously unpublished Zora Neale Hurston novel, THE LIFE OF HEROD THE GREAT, on January 7, 2025, Hurston’s birthday. Scholar and literary critic Deborah Plant, who introduced Hurston’s book Barraccoon when it was published in 2018, will contextualize the novel. The new novel, which Hurston was working when she died, portrays the life of Herod the Great in first century Judea. The publisher writes, “Hurston’s Herod challenges the New Testament version of the tyrant who supposedly ordered the deaths of many children in order to save the Christ-child, as recorded in the book of Matthew, by suggesting […]