Latest News from The Bookseller

 

Booksellers' 'delight' in new Dan Brown novel Booksellers are predicting Dan Brown's next Robert Langdon thriller will be a public-pleasing bestseller and will compete with the latest “megasellers” from E L James, Harper Lee and J K Rowling in terms of sales figures.

Alex Clarke's new imprint named Wildfire Wildfire is the name of Headline's new imprint spearheaded by publishing director Alex Clarke.

Cassava Republic title shortlisted for Goldsmiths Prize Books from Jonathan Cape and Faber and Faber, as well as new African literature publisher Cassava Republic, are on the shortlist for this year’s Goldsmiths Prize, run by Goldsmiths University in association with the New Statesman.

Sunday Times launches children’s book video series The Sunday Times is launching a series of videos about children’s books hosted by its children’s editor, Nicolette Jones.

'Raw' Greg Rutherford memoir to S&S Simon & Schuster UK has acquired Olympic long jump champion Greg Rutherford’s “raw” autobiography Unexpected.

Martin Leonardis launches new literary agency Federica Martin Leonardis has left Rogers Coleridge & White to found her own agency, Martin Leonardis Literary Management.

Hodder 'Say Ja' to Hygge in Christmas parody Hodder is bringing out a parody guide to hygge, the Danish lifestyle philosophy centred on the idea of "cosiness".

Donaldson and Scheffler pen The Ugly Five for Scholastic Scholastic UK will next year publish The Ugly Five, a new picture book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler.

Five unpublished biographies in contention for £2,000 prize The Biographers' Club has revealed the shortlist for the 2016 Tony Lothian Prize, which awards £2,000 to the best proposal for an uncommissioned first biography.

Laird pens novel about Syrian refugee crisis Children’s author Elizabeth Laird has written a book about the Syrian refugee crisis, which is due for publication by Macmillan Children’s Books in January 2017.

New series of BMS Masterclasses announced with James Spackman The Book Marketing Society is launching the second series of its Masterclasses with publisher and consultant James Spackman, after the success of the original events earlier this year.

Amazon Warehouses Coming to Australia?

 

Amazon "is looking for its first warehouse in Australia, with suggestions one site of interest is the Goodman Group's $50 million industrial estate at Oakdale, in Sydney's west," the Morning Herald reported. Goodman is the online retailer's main landlord globally.

Amazon currently has two data centers in Sydney for its Amazon Web Service, "and agents say given the usually large warehouses required by Amazon, the new Oakdale site would be the best available," the Morning Herald wrote, adding that the company "will also look at Melbourne, if a large space is available."

Shelf Awareness

The Roundup with PW

PRH Releases ‘Game of Thrones’ Enhanced E-Book
To mark the 20th anniversary of the release of the first book in George R.R. Martin's Song of Fire and Ice series, 'A Game of Thrones,' Penguin Random House has released an enhanced e-book edition of the title featuring additional content. more »

The Aspen Words Literary Prize: Announcing a new award for a work of fiction focusing on the vital issues of our time — social, political, economic, environmental or otherwise.

Trayvon Martin's Parents Ink Book Deal: Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton are writing a book, which OneWorld will publish in January—nearly five years after the teen was killed.

The Relentlessly Relevant Henry James: The U.S. Postal Service has made a stamp in honor of the American expatriate writer.

New Law for Signed Books: Your signed books and artwork just got much harder to sell in the state of California.

Twitter as Literature: On the novelist whose Twitter feed is both a refuge from writer's block and a work of art.

 

VIEW ALL »

Wellington Book Launch Invitation

 

 

Unity Books and Escalator Press warmly invites you to the launch of

"A clever story about the seductive power of surveillance ... until it goes wrong. Thought-provoking and well written."   – Nicky Hager   We were supposed to be the good guys. We did the right thing. At first ...   Escalator Press are proud to present their first young adult novel, Like Nobody's Watching, written by Wellington author L. J. Ritchie. Ritchie shares the moral journey of a Wellington teenage hacker who uses his school’s surveillance system to seek justice for the bullied and the downtrodden. But the power the cameras provide is too great, and the line between protection and judgement becomes blurred. How do you go from cyber vigilante to cyber villain, when those around you turn their screens against you?

 www.unitybooksonline.co.nz
57 Willis Street, Wellington 6011
04 499 4245

Jordanian writer shot dead outside court after being charged with insulting Islam

Nahed Hattar was killed after being charged with offending Islam

• Raf Sanchez, Middle East correspondent
• Sara Elizabeth Williams, Amman

25 September 2016 • The Telegraph

 

A prominent Jordanian writer was shot dead by a suspected Islamist gunman on Sunday outside the courtroom where he was due to stand trial for offending Islam by sharing a cartoon on Facebook.

Nahed Hattar, a 56-year-old intellectual from Jordan's Christian minority, was gunned down on the steps of a courthouse in Amman in what appeared to be a religiously motivated attack. 

The gunman was arrested at the scene and a Jordanian security source identified him as Riyad Ismail Abdullah, a 49-year-old imam who was wearing traditional Islamic robes at the time of the shooting.
MORE

PRH Launches Unbound Worlds

 

Penguin Random House has launched Unbound Worlds, a consumer-facing website dedicated to science fiction and fantasy. Unbound Worlds is the successor to Suvudu, the genre site launched by Random House in 2008, and features an expanded editorial scope, an updated design and mobile functionality.

Unbound Worlds offers readers a variety of content about SF and fantasy, including author interviews and essays, coverage of author appearances, panels and book signings, book lists and other discovery features, and Cage Match, an annual March Madness-style tournament of fictional characters.

Unbound Worlds joins sister sites Brightly and Signature as part of PRH's consumer-facing efforts.

Shelf Awareness

Bookstores: 'An Experience Impossible to Replicate'

 

"In 2016 people have a plethora of outlets for book talk, book news and book buying, most of them online. But none of them compares to standing in a book store and talking with strangers about what they have in stock.

When a customer asks where to find D.H. Lawrence and it opens a store-wide discussion about his best story, you know you're in a great book shop; when everybody nominates a different story and then all involved--including the employee--file off to browse Lawrence's back catalog, you know you've found your people. It's an experience impossible to replicate via text, chat or online review."

--Paul Friswold, in a story--"Because We Still Buy Books Here: One of 75 Reasons We Love St. Louis in 2016"--in Riverfront Times' best of St. Louis issue about Subterranean Books and other St. Louis bookstores

Shelf Awareness


And from The Read, Booksellers NZ:

Bookshops: The Spine of the Community Bookshops are an entry to 30,000 universes, as author Matt Haig remarked recently on Twitter, and this is why booksellers are so special. They are the ones who know which book will open which door for which person. They are the ones who ride the currents of bestselling colouring books, and massive cookbooks; books by YouTubers and books by celebrity musicians, never losing sight of the end game: to sell books to the readers whose lives they might change. Our bookshops are the spine of the community, possibly even the hinge of humanity: they are what builds our minds.  We are giving your customers a chance to celebrate this on NZ Bookshop Day on 29 October 2016, with this year’s competition asking them simply to write a love letter to their favourite bookshop. All POS ought to reach participating bookshops by the end of next week. The winner of the “best” letter will win $500 in book tokens, and the bookstore it celebrates will win a valuable prize from Nielsen Book. And it's now high time to put up the banners and send in the clowns on their horses, with their dogs, NZ Bookshop Day is just one month away. The magic is just starting to spill out onto social media now, and we have bookshops and publishers alike inspiring us with their ideas in support of this day. We have talked to Lesley Stead from Paige’s Book Gallery, Matt Morris from Arty Bees, and Marion Castree from Vic Books about their plans for this year, which we share along with other plans below.

13 Banned Books That Will Always Have a Place on Our Shelves

 

Off the Shelf   By Off the Shelf Staff    |   Thursday, September 29, 2016 It’s always surprising to us which books wind up on the banned books list each year. They might be banned for violence or drug use or “inappropriate” sexual relationships. But we believe that everyone who has the desire should have the opportunity to read these books and judge the content for themselves. Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden increase in challenges to books in schools, bookstores, and libraries. Each September, publishers, librarians, booksellers, and readers celebrate the freedom to read and raise awareness about the problems of book censorship. We’ve collected some of the most challenged books here based on BannedBooksWeek.org and the American Library Association. READ MORE

Awards

Publishers Lunch

The National Book Foundation named their list of 5 Under 35 honorees Thursday morning:

Brit Bennett, The Mothers (Riverhead)
Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing (Knopf)
Greg Jackson, Prodigals (FSG)
S. Li, Transoceanic Flights (Harvard Square Editions)
Thomas Pierce, Hall of Small Mammals (Riverhead)

The Aspen Institute is launching a $35,000 annual Aspen Words Literary Prize, recognizing "an influential work of fiction that focuses on vital contemporary issues." Submissions for books published in English in 2017 that address questions of violence, inequality, gender, the environment, immigration, religion, race, or other social issues will open early next, and the first award will be presented in New York in early spring 2018.

Correcting Tuesday's awards preview item, the Booker Prize will be awarded the evening of October 25, after the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Winners Of The 2016 Emerging Voices Awards Announced

 

 

Posted at 8:43PM Wednesday 28 Sep 2016

 

Eka Kurniawan, Gareth Nyandoro and Clarissa Campolina take the prizes for fiction, art and film
FT (via Literary Saloon)

Goldsmiths Prize Shortlists Novels 'That Break The Mould'

 

Posted at 7:08AM Thursday 29 Sep 2016

 

Eimear McBride, who struggled for years to find a publisher for her debut novel before it went on to win a host of prizes, has been shortlisted for the Goldsmiths award for her second, The Lesser Bohemians.
Guardian

Richell prize: Susie Greenhill wins literary award for 'ecological love story'

 

Posted at 8:47PM Wednesday 28 Sep 2016

 

Tasmanian author, whose novel The Clinking explores themes of extinction, snaps up award for Australian writers who have not yet published a book
Guardian

Victoria University Press warmly invites you to the launch of The Collected Poems of AlistairTe Ariki Campbell

The Collected Poems of Alistair Te Ariki Campbell Book launch at Unity Books, Thursday 20 October. Victoria University Press warmly invites you to the launch of The Collected Works of Alistair Te Ariki Campbell on Thursday 20 October, 6pm–7.30pm at Unity Books, 57 Willis St, Wellington. About The Collected Works of Alistair Te Ariki Campbell, H/B, $50