Publishing Trends

May 29, 2009

We made it through the first full day of BEA in one piece. Here are our notes.

Were there, as we reported last month, cost-cutting strategies in effect? Looks like it, yup. Random House‘s booth is tiny, with no galleys, no tote bags, and hardly any catalogs. Most of the other large publishers’ spaces are intact, with plush carpets, elaborate displays, and bowls of candy (and book-customized snackpacks at Penguin’s booth). Instead of handing out physical galleys, HarperCollins passed out stacks of postcards with directions to access e-galleys. Still, we are leaving today with a full bag of galleys we can’t wait to read—including Michael Connelly‘s The Scarecrow (Little, Brown, October 2009), the line for which extended far beyond Hachette’s booth, and Chris Brogan and Julien Smith‘s Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust (Wiley, August 2009).
BEA is working on improving its programming, to supplement its sagging exhibitor attendance, and so far there have been some strong efforts, including a panel on giving away content for free (and how to create stickiness), and Thursday’s CEO panel, moderated by Tina Brown and Harry Evans (though he admitted that, if publishers could kill a book’s chances, when at Random House “I was a serial killer.”)
Chris Brogan’s panel this morning, “Becoming an Agent of Trust: Harnessing New Social Media Tools to Grow Communities,” was packed, and though much of the content was the same as his TOC presentation, he talked more this time about publishers’ opportunities beyond the book sale. And as usual, he suggests that publishers listen rather than talk: “You get more credit if you are part of a group,” he said. “Be part of a community before you need it.” He recommends checking out iPhone app Snaptell and the site Upcoming.
In another panel on the Australian scene, with its $2 billion book market ($1.3 of it consumer), Judith Curr moderated a group of publishers and an author, Kate Morton. The audience was knowledgeable about the issues of export versus licensing and the intractable 30-day on-sale rule. Amazon US and Amazon UK are the major online booksellers, with few indigenous e-tailers. Interesting stat: In the US there are 36 stores per 1 million people; in Australia there are 84 stores per 1 million. In New Zealand, there are 140 stores per 1 million.

How was your first day at BEA? Let us know in the comments!

Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged Add new tag, Australian publishing, BEA, Chris Brogan, galleys, HarperCollins, Judith Curr, Michael Connelly, Random House

IDPF Digital Book 2009: Forget DRM

May 12, 2009

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The afternoon panels and presentations at yesterday’s International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) Digital Book 2009 were filled with promises of impending hardware and software innovations. Sony Director of Business Development Bob Nell talked about the number of outlets that will be selling the Sony Reader next Christmas–6,000, which is double last year’s number–and hinted that wireless and Mac-compatible readers are on the horizon. Adobe‘s Nick Bogaty demonstrated how the latest version of CS4 allows direct (and reflowable) ePub export from InDesign. Lexcycle‘s Neelan Choksi showed Stanza’s true range–the iPhone app comes in 12 languages, 21 fonts, and a stunning 135 font colors, plus background textures–and its 1.8 million users come from 60 countries.

But the major theme of all the talks was–ultimately, and appropriately–the consumer. As Smart Bitches, Trashy Books blogger Sarah Wendell put it, what all readers want is a device that is “durable, flexible, accessible, affordable….[Readers] can help you grow the digital book market if you stop creating obstacles for them.”

One current obstacle, said panelists at “Emerging eBook Business Models…and the Role of DRM,” is DRM. Here’s what Andrew Savikas, VP of Digital Initiatives at O’Reilly, had to say.

Direct book sales through O’Reilly’s website make up 10% of its business, and most of those sales are digital books. When customers buy eBooks directly through the site, they receive free lifetime updates–and the books are DRM-free. Meanwhile, because of those benefits, O’Reilly has been able to sustain an eBook price that is 80% of the print book price.

Best of all, eBook sales have impacted print sales positively. For example, O’Reilly offers its book iPhone: The Missing Manual by David Pogue as an iPhone app, a printed book, and an eBook. When O’Reilly raised the app’s price, fewer people bought the app AND sales of the printed book on Amazon fell. When O’Reilly lowered the app’s price, people bought more copies of both the app and the printed book.

Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged business models, DRM, ebooks, EPUB, IDPF, O'Reilly

Jacket Copy Sells Books, So Make It Good.

May 1, 2009

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Would you rather read a “splendid, funny, lyrical book about family, truth, memory, and the resilience of love” or a “powerful novel” about “the strength of love and loss, the searing ramifications of war, and the mysterious, almost magical bonds that unite and sustain us”? A “poignant celebration of the potency of familial love” or “a luminous, provocative, and ultimately redemptive look at how even mothers and daughters with the best intentions can be blind to the harm they do to one another”? More importantly, which would you rather buy? Read More »

Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged bestsellers, book consumers, book sales, book shoppers, Codex Group, David Baldacci, Early Read Book Preview, editorial assistants, First Family, flap copy, Grand Central Publishing, jacket copy, literary fiction, Mitch Hoffman, Peter Hildick-Smith, Publishers Weekly, women's fiction

Book View, May 2009

May 1, 2009

PEOPLE ROUNDUP

Broadway’s Editor-in-Chief Stacy Creamer will join Simon & Schuster as VP and Publisher of Touchstone Fireside, reporting to Free Press Publisher Martha Levin. The two lines “will have independently functioning editorial and publishing staffs,” according to the announcement….Current T/F Publisher Mark Gompertz takes on the new role of EVP, Digital Publishing. He and Ellie Hirschhorn, EVP, Chief Digital Officer, who was hired last year, both report to CEO Carolyn Reidy.

There have reportedly been a number of layoffs at Phaidon in the US and UK, including Executive Managing Editor Nancy Grubb.

Gretchen Koss and Meghan Walker have announced the formation of their company, Tandem Literary, a full-service firm that combines all aspects of book marketing with PR under one umbrella. The two worked together at Random House until late 2008, Koss as the Director of Publicity for Spiegel & Grau (the principals of which endorse their former employees on the Tandem website), and Walker as Spiegel & Grau’s Director of Marketing.

Michael Healy, Executive Director of the Book Industry Study Group (BISG), will also reportedly head the Book Rights Registry, if the proposed settlement of the Google lawsuit is eventually accepted. Before coming to the U.S. in 2006, Healy was Director of Nielsen Book Services in the UK.

Lorna Owen has joined Other Press as Senior Editor. She was at Nan A. Talese/Doubleday for eight years.

John Mendelson will join Candlewick Press in mid-May as SVP, Sales and Digital Initiatives. He is currently Director of Trade Sales at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, where he has worked for more than a decade in a variety of sales positions.

As reported in the New York Observer, following the merger of the William Morris and Endeavor agencies, Richard Abate’s literary department appears to be the first casualty. In other agency news, Writers House has set up a small London operation. Writers House UK will be under the direction of Angharad Kowal, who joined the agency in 2008 following eight years with S&S, most recently as Rights Director for the Children’s Division, as well as for Simon Spotlight Entertainment….Kirsten Neuhaus has started her own eponymous literary agency. She was most recently an agent and foreign rights manager at Vigliano Associates. Michael Harriot was also at Vigliano, where he represented his own clients and co-agented deals with David Vigliano, and has now joined Sanford J. Greenburger Associates as an agent.

Liza Pulitzer Voges has opened her own literary agency, Eden Street LLC. She will represent authors and illustrators of children’s books, and can be reached at lvoges [at] edenstlit.com. Voges was with Kirchoff Wohlberg for 25 years. The website is not yet operational.

Kathy Warren has been named National Accounts Manager at Dover Publications, which is owned by Courier. Warren previously worked for Sellers Publications in Portland, ME. According to Publishers Lunch, Courier took a non-cash $15.6 million charge related to performance at Dover, representing 100% of Dover’s goodwill.

Lloyd Jassin resigned as chairman of the New York Center for Independent Publishing executive committee, citing differences between his vision for NYCIP and that of the General Society of Mechanics & Tradesmen. NYCIP Executive Director Karin Taylor was laid off in February. The NYCIP is being overseen by interim director Leah Schnelbach.

Matthew Lore has launched The Experiment, LLC, a new trade publishing company focused on practical nonfiction. The company publishes its inaugural list this fall, with six books. Lore is joined by Peter Burri as general partner. The Experiment’s adviser and principal investor is Richard Gallen, who has been a co-founder or investor in more than a dozen companies, including Tor.

Sarah Reidy has joined Pocket Books as Associate Director of Publicity. She was at Soho Press, where she was Director for the past two years. Justin Hargett has rejoined Soho as the new Director of Publicity, after working at Ohio University Press, Other Press, and Oxford University Press.

Feminist Press Editorial Director Amy Scholder has hired Jeanann Pannasch as new Managing Editor. She was Managing Editor for Spin and Ms. magazines. Drew Stevens, who has produced titles for Knopf, Chanticleer, Scholastic, Sterling, Chronicle, and Random House, has been hired as Production & Design Manager. Newly hired Administrative Manager Deonne Kahler was a business consultant and is a blogger and freelance writer. Publicity Manager Rachael Rakes was Marketing Director at AK Press.

S&S Children’s announced that Sy Sumg has joined the children’s subsidiary rights group as Assistant Manager. He was at Random House.

PROMOTIONS AND INTERNAL CHANGES

David Levithan has been promoted to VP, Editorial Director for Scholastic Trade Publishing. He had been Executive Editorial Director for Scholastic Press fiction, multimedia publishing, and PUSH.

Random House Publishing Group’s Sanyu Dillon announced that in addition to her current role as VP, Director of Marketing for the Bantam/Dell imprints, Carolyn Schwartz will now also oversee the marketing efforts for Ballantine, with the title of VP, Director of Marketing, Ballantine/Bantam/Dell.

At Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Josh Harwood has been promoted to National Sales Director in the NYC office, replacing John Mendelson, who has gone to Candlewick (see above). He was a sales rep covering New York and New England. Beth Ineson has been promoted to Director of Field Sales and Distribution Clients. She was previously a distribution client manager.

Oren Teicher, COO of the American Booksellers Association (ABA), has been named CEO, replacing Avin Domnitz, who is retiring. Separately, ABA announced that Books Inc.’s Michael Tucker is up for election as President of ABA in June.

DULY NOTED

Agent Ira Silverberg has negotiated an imprint, to be called Igniter, within Carrie Kania’s new HarperCollins imprint, It. Igniter will be managed by Silverberg’s client Neil Strauss and co-editor/publisher Anthony Bozza and will focus “on the margins of pop culture.” The first title will appear this fall.

comScore, Inc. released the results of a study of vertical ad networks, which target ads to specific audiences online according to demographic or category content. The study showed that the collective reach of such networks has increased from 21.5% of the total U.S. internet audience in March 2008 to 57.1% in March 2009. The most popular categories were gaming, entertainment, community, news/information, and health.

Publishers Weekly’s list of publishing’s unemployed continues to grow and includes many familiar names. Though only loosely alphabetized, it is a good resource.

The Stanford Publishing Courses for Professionals announces the first “Amazon ’09 Innovation Scholarship,” awarded to “a book or magazine publisher who has demonstrated particular innovation either in using new technologies to deliver content or in developing new business models to sustain and promote publishing in a digital age.” The Scholarship covers full tuition, lodging, and travel costs for one publishing professional to attend the course. The deadline is May 15.

UPCOMING EVENTS

PEN’s World Voices Festival finishes May 3 with “Henry Hudson 400 Years: Amsterdam and New York City,” featuring Ian Buruma, Geert Mak, and Russell Shorto talking about the influences of Holland on New York, and vice versa.

New York City’s New School is hosting a series of forums on writing for children, hosted by editor Deborah Brodie. The next forum takes place May 5 from 6:30–7:30 p.m. and features Leonard S. Marcus, book critic and children’s book historian. Tickets cost $5 and can be ordered from the New School by calling (212) 229-5488.

The French-American Foundation’s Translation Prizes will take place on Tuesday, May 26 at 6 PM at the Century Association (7 W. 43rd St.).

Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged ABA, AK Press, American Booksellers Association, Amy Scholder, Angharad Kowal, Anthony Bozza, Avin Domnitz, Ballantine, Bantam/Dell, Beth Ineson, BISG, Book Industry Study Group, Books Inc., Broadway, Candlewick Press, Carolyn Reidy, Carolyn Schwartz, Carrie Kania, Chanticleer, Chronicle, comScore, Courier, David Levithan, David Vigliano, Deborah Brodie, Deonne Kahler, Digital Publishing, Doubleday, Dover Publications, Drew Stevens, Eden Street, Ellie Hirschhorn, Endeavor, Feminist Press, Free Press, French-American Foundation, Geert Mak, General Society of Mechanics & Tradesmen, Gretchen Koss, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Ian Buruma, Igniter, Ira Silverberg, Jeanann Pannasch, John Mendelson, Josh Harwood, Justin Hargett, Karin Taylor, Kathy Warren, Kirchoff Wohlberg, Kirsten Neuhaus, Knopf, Leah Schnelbach, Leonard S. Marcus, Liza Pulitzer Voges, Lloyd Jassin, Lorna Owen, Mark Gompertz, Martha Levin, Matthew Lore, Meghan Walker, Michael Harriot, Michael Healy, Michael Tucker, Nan A. Talese, Nancy Grubb, Neil Strauss, New School, New York Center for Independent Publishing, New York Observer, Ohio University Press, Oren Teicher, Other Press, Oxford University Press, PEN World Voices, Peter Burri, Phaidon, Pocket Books, Rachael Rakes, Random House, RHPG, Richard Abate, Richard Gallen, Russell Shorto, Sanford J. Greenburger Associates, Sanyu Dillon, Sarah Reidy, Scholastic, Sellers Publications, Simon & Schuster, Simon Spotlight Entertainment, Soho Press, Spiegel & Grau, Stacy Creamer, Stanford Professional Publishing Course, Sterling, Sy Sumg, Tandem Literary, The Experiment, Tor, Touchstone Fireside, vertical ad networks, Vigliano Associates, William Morris, Writers House, Writers House UK

Jacket Copy Case Study: Come Sunday by Isla Morley

May 1, 2009

comesunday

We chose three titles to be included in the Codex Group jacket copy survey. One was Come Sunday, which will be published in June by Sarah Crichton Books/FSG. Though Come Sunday had the weakest title and cover impact of the three books we tested, the added appeal of its jacket copy made it the book with the strongest purchase interest. Nearly 1 in 3 shoppers, especially Women’s Fiction, Parenting, Christian, and Literary Fiction readers, were interested in buying it after reading its copy. Here’s the copy in full:

“Come Sunday grips your heart from the first page and doesn’t let go.”–Sara Gruen, author of Water for Elephants

What a novel this is! A saga that sweeps from the hills of Honolulu to the veldt of South Africa; a book that breaks our hearts while making our spirits soar.

In Isla Morley’s transcendent debut we catch a hint of the spirit of Barbara Kingsolver; we’re pierced with the truth of Jodi Picoult. We are reminded of how it felt, long ago, to dive into the drama of The Thorn Birds. And we celebrate a splendid new talent.

The luminous tale that unfolds in Come Sunday centers on Abbe Deighton, the independent-spirited wife of a minister in Hawaii. Abbe isn’t a native Hawaiian. She grew up in a broken home in turbulent apartheid South Africa, seeing things she shouldn’t have seen . . . and still doesn’t entirely understand. But she is trying to put them behind her, working to enjoy her life in her leaky house on a Honolulu hillside, with a precocious three-year-old daughter, Cleo, and a loving husband, Greg. Sure, it’s a little tedious at times, but God knows, there are worse things than tedium. God knows.

Abbe’s routine world explodes when the unimaginable happens: her daughter is struck and killed by a car. Cleo’s death launches Abbe into a new country, where she is forced to examine her relations with the people she professes to love, her tenuous faith, and the events surrounding the calamitous last summer in the homeland of her youth. Searching for a reason to go on, Abbe returns to the South Africa of her childhood, a world where curses were cast, secrets were kept, and a murder was concealed. It is there that Abbe will have to make the harshest of choices, ones that blur the lines of blame and forgiveness, fate and faith.

With its enthralling storytelling and spellbinding intensity, Come Sunday is everything a reader looks for in a novel—and then some.

Isla Morley grew up in South Africa during apartheid, the child of a British father and a fourth-generation South African mother. She was one of the youngest magazine editors in South Africa, but left country, career, and kin when she married an American and moved to California. For more than a decade she worked in nonprofits, focusing on the needs of women and children. Now living in the Los Angeles area, Morley shares a home with her husband, daughter, two cats, a dog, and a tortoise.

Praise for Come Sunday

“Come Sunday grips your heart from the first page and doesn’t let go. Isla Morley takes us on an unforgettable journey from the hills of Hawaii to the plains of South Africa, daring us to join her as she crosses racial and cultural divides. A heart-wrenching tale of unthinkable loss and hard-won healing, this is a novel to savor, like the lingering notes of a fine wine.”—Sara Gruen, author of Water for Elephants

“Come Sunday is a rare and luminous novel. I felt the emotions under my skin, had to put the book down to settle myself, then kept reading through the night. Isla Morley explores the interior and exterior worlds with sharp and tender insight.”—Luanne Rice, author of The Geometry of Sisters

Here’s what Sarah Crichton told us about writing the jacket copy for this title.

Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged Come Sunday, Isla Morley

Sarah Crichton on the Jacket Copy for Come Sunday

May 1, 2009

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“Writing the jacket copy for Come Sunday was agony! Here were the challenges:

An unknown author;

the plot hinges on the fact that a little girl dies in the first chapter, a fact which can drive away the very audience we’re trying to attract, and which might make the book sound like a downer when it is, in fact, full of hard-won joy and redemption;

and, the story takes place in both Hawaii and South Africa, a fact which might make it sound “foreign” to potential buyers and readers.

Here were the potential pluses: It has a great, sweeping, old-fashioned storytelling quality to it;

a real, but not heavy-handed or evangelical, Christian spirit to it;

a flawed but evolving lead female character;

a great, redemptive ending.

At FSG what normally happens is that an editorial assistant (with the editor overseeing) works up catalogue copy for a book. Then, when the time comes, that copy is adapted (either by the editorial assistants or by the editors themselves) for the book jacket. The copy then goes to the marketing director, who (in our case) is very wise and tends to kick the copy back a lot.

Where you can go wrong with this method is that you are very often speaking to quite different audiences. The catalogue copy has to appeal to potential reviewers and booksellers, whereas with the flap copy, this is your one chance to speak directly to the buyers and readers. I sometimes forget this—and when I do, I deeply regret it. When I get lazy, and leave my copy to assistants, it tends to lean heavily on the regurgitation of the plot, because, what else does an editorial assistant have to go on?

In the case of Come Sunday, plot regurgitation was going to drive away prospective readers, because you start with a dead three year old, and then a marriage breaks up, and then a woman leaves Hawaii and returns to her native South Africa, where her childhood home has become a hospice for children with AIDS. It doesn’t sound like fun.

But in fact it’s a real stretch-out-on-the-couch read. So we worked on comparisons (Kingsolver, Picoult and, digging back into the great read on foreign soil territory, The Thorn Birds). We made sure to use adjectives that stress the redemptive spirit (luminous, transcendent, spirits soar), both to make the storyline feel less scary and to also covey some of its spiritual quality. And even though one tends not to do this, the Sara Gruen quote on the back was so strong, and she has such appeal with readers, I used part of the quote again to kick off the flap copy. Our copy editors thought it was tacky to repeat it in two places, but, tough.”

Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged Come Sunday, jacket copy, Sarah Crichton

Swedish Crimes and Turkish Tales

By Katie Lee Hull

May 1, 2009

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After making the rounds at Bologna and London, some international publishers and agents are choosing to give their expense accounts a rest and opt out of this year’s BEA. “I remember the good old times when there was just…Frankfurt!” says Marie Louise Zarmanian, translation rights manager at Editoriale Mauri Spagnol, who blames Guadalajara, Turin, and Mantua (never mind the recently launched Abu Dhabi, Leipzig, and Cape Town) for her fair fatigue. But neither the economy nor swine flu will deter others from attending BEA this year.

Joakim Hansson, agent and director of the Nordin Agency in Stockholm, recently returned from London riding high on the crime wave that has helped him make the second largest book deal in Sweden’s history. Mons Kallentoft is still reaping the benefits of his switch from award-winning literary author to writing what Hansson describes as “literary crime” novels. The Nordin Agency enjoyed successful U.S. sales of other Swedish crime writers, including Christian Moerk to Henry Holt and Camilla Läckberg to Pegasus.

The first title in Kallentoft’s series, Midwinter Sacrifice, has so far sold more than 220,000 copies in Sweden, and the second title, Summertime Death, has also appeared on Swedish bestseller lists. While at LBF, Natur & Kultur bought the rights to the next three books in the series for an amount rumored to be around $1 million, a hefty sum for a country with a population around nine million. The murder mysteries follow Molin Fors, a single mother and investigator. The series spans three different violent crimes that Fors must unravel while battling not only frozen plains and deadly wildfires, but also those who eventually pursue both her and her daughter.

It only takes one small sale to make up for expenses incurred by attending BEA, Hansson points out, and the agency hopes to replicate the success it saw in London in New York. “Stieg Larsson has paved the way,” says Hansson. “In southern Europe people are crazy about European crime, and it is finally catching on in the U.S.” The first excerpts of Kallentoft’s trilogy translated into English were, according to Hansson, “quirky” and did not fit the original style of the book. New translations are in the works and so far offers from the U.S. and UK have been rejected for being insufficient. Rights have been sold to Norway, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Spain, and Italy. For more information, contact joakim [at] nordinagency.com.

Oya Alpar of the Turkish publishing house Altin Kitaplar is also returning from LBF, only to do it all over again for BEA. Alpar’s company publishes many bestselling foreign authors including Stephen King, Christopher Paolini, Patricia Cornwell, and soon, Dan Brown. Aside from those commercial mega-bestsellers, though, even popular titles see relatively low sales figures. The absence of a substantial book-buying community means that “in Turkey, the biggest books sell only 5,000 copies or so,” Alpar says. Like their U.S. counterparts, Turkish publishers are responding to the economy by being more cautious in choosing which books to publish, which can put Turkish writers at an even greater disadvantage—and when publishers are looking for commercial sure bets, local writers are usually the first to get passed up. This month, only one of the top five bestselling authors, Canan Tan, is Turkish. Elif Safak, a French woman of Turkish descent, who—much like Pulitzer Prize winner Orhan Pamuk—was accused and later acquitted of insulting Turkish national identity, is back on the bestseller list with her newest title, Love.

Despite the absence of chain bookstores, independent booksellers in Turkey are still in a fierce battle for survival. Comparatively high rents for storefronts force sellers into smaller spaces with little room for displays, and larger spaces are rare. The move to online purchasing has been slow, and although almost everyone in major cities has internet access, most books are still bought in brick-and-mortar stores.

One author to recently hit Turkish bookstores is Hakan Yel, whose debut thriller, Touching the Sultan (Altin Kitaplar) came out in 2006. Despite the success of that and his second thriller, Restaurant, Yel made the switch to historical fiction for his new novel, Sowers of the Wind. The tale begins in 1915 with the Ottoman Empire on the verge of collapse. Taking advantage of wartime conditions, partisan gangs have launched attacks throughout the Turkish and Armenian communities, robbing caravans and burning down villages. But an Armenian village and a Turkish village located near each other manage to maintain a cordial relationship. However, when one of the villages is found in flames, members of the surviving village turn against one another, in blame and in fear that their village will be next. Yel’s first two titles were published in Bulgaria and Romania and will soon be published in Poland and Japan. For
rights information, contact Nermin Mollaoglu at the Kalem Literary Agency at nerminmollaoglu [at] gmail.com.

Relatively new to the scene, and so far without an agent to call his own (he’s still in negotiations), Czech author Tomáš Zmeškal won’t have representation at BEA. But if he did, editors, you might take note. It took Zmeškal five years to land a publisher for his debut novel, Love Letter in Cuneiform Script. But after a prominent Czech critic known for his less than complimentary reviews praised him and compared him to famous authors including Josef Škvorecký, Bohumil Hrabal, and Salman Rushdie, he became an overnight success, five years in the making.

When asked by Radio Prague how he felt about the sudden attention the review earned his book, Zmeškal admitted he didn’t even know about it at first. “[My friends] didn’t want to bother me with that review because they thought I knew about it, but I didn’t,” he said. Love Letter is the story of a couple who meet before WWII, and it follows them into the post-war communist era. Each chapter tells the story from the perspective of a different character. One of the characters is an Englishman who witnesses a gory Czech tradition of killing and eating carp at Christmas. Like an anthropologist studying a strange tribe, he walks out onto the street in late December to watch in disgust as men in strange outfits kill, clean, and eat the fish, horrifying the observer.

Zmeškal’s father was from the Congo but moved to the Czech Republic, where the author was born and raised. Zmeškal
studied English literature at Cambridge and later taught literature at Charles University in Prague.

Love Letter in Cuneiform Script, published by Czech publisher Torst, was nominated for the prestigious
Magnesia Litera Prize and has already sold 7,000 copies in the Czech Republic. For foreign rights information, contact Edgar de Bruin at ejdb [at] planet.nl.

Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged Altin Kitaplar, BEA, Bohumil Hrabal, Bologna, booksellers, Camilla Läckberg, Canan Tan, chain stores, Christian Moerk, Christopher Paolini, Czech Republic, Dan Brown, Edgar de Bruin, Editoriale Mauri Spagnol, Elif Safak, Hakan Yel, Henry Holt, independent booksellers, international, Joakim Hansson, Josef Škvorecký, Kalem Literary Agency, London, Love Letter in Cuneiform Script, Magnesia Litera Prize, Midwinter Sacrifice, Mons Kallentoft, Natur & Kultur, Nermin Mollaogul, Nordin Agency, Orhan Pamuk, Ottoman Empire, Oya Alpar, Patricia Cornwell, Pegasus, Radio Prague, Salman Rushdie, Sowers of the Wind, Stephen King, Stieg Larsson, Summertime Death, Sweden, Tomáš Zmeška, Torst, Touching the Sultan, Turkey

What’s New at BEA 2009

May 1, 2009

Last fall, BookExpo America formed its first-ever Conference Advisory Board and decided to increase the show’s focus on content and programming. “In the past, we had too many sessions that were all over the map and that were trying to be all things to all people,” says Courtney Muller, Group Vice President of BEA. In an attempt to create a “seamless package that promotes authors while delivering content,” the board decided to reduce the number of educational panels at this year’s show to 50, all targeted at specific communities: booksellers/retailers, librarians, publishers, and media.

“We also wanted to do something with consumers and young publishing professionals,” says Muller. Additionally, the board created three panels especially for consumers: Teens, Baby Boomers, and Book Club Facilitators. The panels will be led by board members Carol Fitzgerald of Bookreporter.com and Neil Strandberg of Tattered Cover.

BEA VP Lance Fensterman highlighted other new events and changes to expect at the show this year:

The BEA New Media Zone, showcasing ebooks, podcasting, lit bloggers, and digital video.
Author Stages on the show floor, with fifteen events planned. Along with Pat Conroy and John Irving, one of the featured authors will be Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, on his first trip back to New York City and standing “literally of hundreds of feet from where he settled his plane down so perfectly and safely in the Hudson River,” Fensterman notes. Along with author badges, there are new badge categories to “eliminate the less desirable attendees and better identify desirable attendees.” Are you a desirable attendee? Guess you’ll find out when you see your badge. . .
A new Young Adult Buzz Forum on Friday, in addition to the Editor and Bookseller Buzz Forums on Thursday. ForeWord Magazine is also running an Indie Buzz panel.
Perseus will kick off its book publishing project, a collaborative challenge inviting “book people everywhere” to help create, publish, and market a book in 32 hours. The project will take place on Friday and Saturday.

However, cost-cutting strategies will also be in effect:

Fewer publishers on the floor. Macmillan, HoughtonMifflin Harcourt, Globe Pequot, Kensington, Rodale, DC Comics, National Geographic, Shambhala, Melville House, and Taschen won’t have booths, though Macmillan, HMH, and Rodale have meeting rooms. Random House has cut its space by over 50%.
Fewer ARCs. “While the the move is being made to save costs this year,” says Fensterman, “it does open the door to electronic galleys, better tracking by exhibitors of who they spoke with at the show (thus following up with a paper ARC), and an emphasis on new strategies to engage attendees.”

Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged ARCs, BEA, BookExpo America, Bookreporter.com, Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, Carol Fitzgerald, Courtney Muller, DC Comics, ForeWord Magazine, Globe Pequot, HoughtonMifflin Harcourt, John Irving, Kensington, Lance Fensterman, Macmillan, Melville House, National Geographic, Neil Strandberg, Pat Conroy, Perseus, Rodale, Shambhala, Taschen, Tattered Cover, YA

Bologna, from a Licensing POV