Latest News from The Bookseller

World Book Day still dominates charts World Book Day titles continue to dominate the Official UK Top 50 with nine of the 10 titles published as part of the annual charity celebrations claiming positions within the Top 10 this week. The 10 ￡1 titles sold 224,433 combined copies in the seven days ending 14th March. This was down 34% on the previous week but the drop was shallower than the second week drop off of 2014’s 10 releases.

Cross to sponsor British Sports Book Awards The British Sports Book Awards will have a headline sponsor for the first time this year, following a deal with luxury pen-maker Cross. Held on 3rd June at Lord's Cricket Ground, this year's awards will give out prizes for categories including autobiography of the year, biography of the year, and covering football, cricket, rugby and horse racing. For the first time in the award's 13-year history, an individual award will also be given to cycling, marking the increase of publishing in the area.

Pratchett fundraising at £40,000 Close to £40,000 has been raised in memory of Sir Terry Pratchett in just five days. Pratchett, the author of books including the Discworld series, died on 12th March. He had been suffering from Alzheimer’s. A JustGiving fundraising page set up in his memory by his publisher Penguin Random House UK has so far had 2,179 donations totalling £38,942.54.

Amazon Publishing expands to France Amazon Publishing has expanded into France, internally hiring Clément Monjou, formerly of its Kindle and Appstore units.  The development of Amazon Publishing Europe has already seen the e-commerce giant set up publishing arms in the UK and Germany, while it has also advertised for positions in Spain.  Dominic Myers, former Waterstones m.d, was appointed in October to head up Amazon Publishing Europe.

China's Tencent and Shanda Cloudary merge Two Chinese online publishing companies – Tencent Literature and Shanda Cloudary – have announced they are to merge. The firms will become the Yuewen Group, the country’s largest online publishing and e-book company, reported the South China Morning Post.

Sidey fundraising hits target An Unbound appeal to raise money to publish the late Paul Sidey’s first book has reached its fundraising target. Sidey, former editorial director of Hutchinson, wrote a number of books between his retirement from publishing and his death from cancer in September 2014. An appeal was set up in mid-January on crowd-funding website Unbound to raise money to publish The Book of Wag, a cross between a family memoir and fiction.

English PEN celebrates translation decade Lydia Cacho, Masha Gessen and Elif Shafak are among the writers taking part in a year of events to mark the 10th anniversary of English PEN’s Writers in Translation programme, with the celebrations launching at Foyles tonight (18th March). The Writers in Translation programme has supported more than 100 in nearly 50 languages through its grants, funded by Bloomberg and Arts Council England.

Sangster to join Head of Zeus Head of Zeus has appointed Suzanne Sangster as publicity director.  Sangster is currently publicity director of Biteback Publishing, where she has planned campaigns for authors such as Damian McBride, Nigel Farage and Stanley Johnson, and has been involved in running the Paddy Power Political Book Awards. Before this role, she worked for several companies in a freelance capacity, including HarperCollins and Dorling Kindersley, and was an account director at Midas for several years.

Simon Sebag Montefiore to complete trilogy Century has acquired the next novel by Simon Sebag Montefiore, which will be the final novel in the Russia-set trilogy that began with Sashenka (Bantam Press) and One Night in Winter (Century). Publisher Selina Walker acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, from Georgina Capel of Capel & Land to the as-yet-untitled novel. The book is set on the steppes of southern Russia near Stalingrad during the Second World War and will feature the characters of the earlier novels.