Latest news from The Bookseller

Relationship between bookshops and libraries 'set to change' The relationship between booksellers and libraries is ‘set to change’ on a national scale with the intensifying of a partnership between the Booksellers Association and the Society of Chief Librarians (SCL).

Death of Carol Brown Janeway Renowned Knopf editor and translator Carol Brown Janeway has died at the age of 71. Announcing the news to colleagues with "profound sadness", Knopf chief executive Sonny Mehta acknowledged it came as a "shock", following a diagnosis of late stage cancer made just two weeks ago.

Francesca Best joins Transworld Francesca Best is to join Transworld, moving to the Penguin Random House company from Hachette UK’s Hodder & Stoughton. Best, who has been at Hodder & Stoughton for eight years, will become a senior commissioning editor for the women’s fiction team at Transworld, starting on 24th August. Authors Best has worked with at Hodder & Stoughton include Lucy Dillon, Alexandra Potter and Katie Marsh.

HarperCollins Brasil launches HarperCollins Publishers and Ediouro Group yesterday (3rd August) announced they are creating a new Brazilian business, HarperCollins Brasil, by combining the existing operations of Thomas Nelson Brasil and Harlequin Brasil with Ediouro’s commercial trade publishing. HarperCollins Brasil will release around 350 titles per year from HarperCollins’ trade, children’s, Christian and romance imprints, as well as from a list of local Brazilian authors.

Waterstones marks Murakami with 'pinball battle' Customers at Waterstones’ flagship stores in London and Glasgow will go head-to-head in a pinball battle to celebrate the release for the first time in English outside Japan of Haruki Murakami’s Wind/Pinball (Harvill Secker). Harvill Secker has designed and created bespoke pinball machines, which will be in Waterstones Piccadilly in London and Waterstones Sauchiehall in Glasgow all this week. Customers can share their high scores on social media using the hashtag #murakamipinball, with the highest scores each day winning a signed copy of Wind/Pinball.

French national reading campaign 'awoke imaginations' France’s first national reading campaign aimed at children and adolescents on holiday, Lire en Short (Reading in Shorts), has been a huge success and will be repeated next year, according to Culture Minister Fleur Pellerin. The two-week campaign, which ended last Friday, involved more than 1,600 events around the country and attracted more then 300,000 youngsters and their parents.

B&N completes college spinoff American bookseller Barnes & Noble has completed the separation of its Retail and College businesses. Barnes & Noble Education, Inc is now an independent public company and the parent of Barnes & Noble College, trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol, “BNED.”  A B&N spokesperson said the company’s leadership team joined with store managers to ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange yesterday (3rd August) morning to mark the moment.

Ball fundraises for NLT through sewing competition Children’s publisher Karen Ball is raising money for the National Literacy Trust via a new sewing campaign. Ball, publishing director at Little, Brown Young Readers UK, part of Hachette Children’s, is also a sewing blogger and runs the Didyoumakethat blog, which has more than 9,000 subscribers. Lee's reign continues, Grey sales near 1m Harper Lee has kept hold of the Official Top 50 top spot for a third consecutive week with Go Set A Watchman (Heinemann). It shifted 27,122 copies and made £315,252 through Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market, which equated to a 52.9% drop week-on-week.