National Book Award Finalists Announced By Lynn Andriani - 10/14/2009
The National Book Foundation has announced the finalists for the 2009 National Book Awards. One debut fiction writer made the list, as well as three previous NBA finalists and the second graphic novel in the Awards’ history. Farrar, Straus & Giroux landed three nominations and Holt two giving Macmillan five nominees. Random House has three finalists, one from Little Random and two from Knopf; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Norton each nabbed two.
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The Wimp Factor By Karen Springen - 10/08/2009
In schoolyards, jocks may still rule. But in bookstores, the big boy on campus is a wimp. More specifically, he’s a middle-schooler named Greg Heffley, the star of Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. Next Monday, Amulet Books imprint is releasing four million copies of Dog Days, the fourth installment of the cartoon-illustrated novels—the largest first printing for any children’s book this year.
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'Symbol,' 'Compass’ Reinvigorate Debate on Embargoes, Discounts By Rachel Deahl with Jim Milliot - 09/21/2009
The release last week of two of the biggest books of the year—The Lost Symbol and True Compass—once again brought debate about two industry issues: embargoes and deep discount on top titles. Almost exactly two years after the breaking of embargoes on State of Denial and Tough Choices by the New York Times prompted then PW editor-in-chief Sara Nelson to ask what the point of embargoe...
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'The Hypnotist,' Hot LBF Title, Tops in Sweden 09/21/2009
Not too much new fiction made it to the top of the lists in the major European markets in August, but there was a new bestseller in Sweden, with The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler landing at #1. The novel was one of the hot books at the London Book Fair and was bought for the U.S. after the fair closed by Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
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Counting Down to 'Catching Fire' By Karen Springen - 08/20/2009
The yearlong Catching Fire countdown will finally end on September 1, the laydown date for the second installment of the Hunger Games trilogy. With a first printing of 350,000 copies, Suzanne Collins’s dystopian tale is the first big children’s book of the fall. Jeff Kinney’s new Diary of a Wimpy Kid book may be bigger in terms of print run, as is Kate DiCamillo’s The Magician’s Elephant. But the buzz about the Hunger Games sequel is louder.
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Levy, Zafon in Fiction; Mosterd In Nonfiction 08/17/2009
Marc Levy, who scored a #1 bestseller last summer in France with All Those Things We Never Said, is back on the top of the charts this July with The First Day, a thriller about how the origins of the universe are different than believed. Though his books have been translated into 41 languages, Levy has had little success in the U.
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Smith in Italy, Zafón in Sweden 05/18/2009
Two international novelists topped the Italian bestsellers list in April with Wilbur Smith's Assegai , the latest in his Courtney family saga, landing at #1. Assegai, which has hit several other bestsellers lists including in the U.K. and South Africa, is just out in the U.S. from St. Martin's. French thriller writer Fred Vargas secured the second spot with her newest, A Dubious Place, which wa...
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PW's Review of "The Last Olympian" by Rick Riordan 05/05/2009
Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series comes to a close with the release of The Last Olympian, which goes on sale today and has a 1.2-million copy first printing. The PW review follows.
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‘The Sorceress’ Heats Up with Marketing Muscle By Shannon Maughan - 04/30/2009
The “Summer of the Sorceress” campaign, which heralds the arrival of The Sorceress, third book in Michael Scott’s bestselling Immortal Secrets of Nicholas Flamel fantasy series, kicked off last weekend with RHCB’s first-ever PDF/e-book giveaway.
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The Last Hurrah for Percy Jackson By Matia Burnett - 04/30/2009
Fans have only five days left to wait for the May 5 release of The Last Olympian, the fifth and final book in Rick Riordan’s mythological fantasy series, Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Here’s a roundup of the plans for The Last Olympian.
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The 2009 Pulitzer Prizes for Letters and Drama 04/20/2009
Adding a Pulitzer to her National Book Award, Annette Gordon-Reed has been awarded the prize for her monumental historical work, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (Norton). The book also won the 2009 National Book Award for nonfiction.
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Chronicle Finds a Hit Online By Shannon Maughan - 03/26/2009
Nina Laden’s board book, Peek-a-Who? (Chronicle, 2000), keeps young readers guessing, but the title’s phenomenal popularity on Amazon has some adults pleasantly surprised, too. Last December the book was the retailing site’s highest ranked children’s picture/board book, as well as the 57th bestselling title overall, selling more than 4000 copies per week.
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Bestselling Children's Books 2008: Meyer’s Deep Run by Diane Roback - 03/23/2009
This time last year, booksellers were bemoaning the end of Harry Potter. That series, which ended in 2007, sold 19 million copies that year, and it didn’t seem as though anything would be replacing it anytime soon. How quickly things change. Last year, as the final volume in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series pubbed (six million copies sold) and the Twilight movie was released (dom...
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Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw By John A. Sellers - 12/04/2008 Greg Heffley may be the “Wimpy Kid,” but his series keeps going strong. On January 13, Abrams’s Amulet imprint will release The Last Straw by Jeff Kinney, the third storybook in the series that has staked out a claim on bestseller charts since its 2007 debut. In The Last Straw, which lands with a million-copy first printing, Greg’s father attempts to toughen up his son. More
Princess Diaries Take a Final Bow By Sally Lodge - 12/04/2008
Princess Mia Thermopolis will don her tiara for the last time in Forever Princess, the 10th and crowning installment of Meg Cabot’s Princess Diaries series. Turned down by 12 houses before finding a home in 1999, the inaugural novel, The Princess Diaries launched one of the first commercial, girl-oriented series that have been so successful in the young adult market during the last decade
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Blundell Wins NBA in Young People’s Literature By Diane Roback - 11/20/2008
The National Book Award for Young People’s Literature was given Wednesday night to Judy Blundell, for her novel What I Saw and How I Lied (Scholastic Press), a noirish coming-of-age mystery set just after World War II.
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NBA Finalists Take Teens Behind Their Books By John A. Sellers - 11/20/2008
For the 11th year running, the National Book Foundation held a National Book Awards Teen Press Conference, which allows the five nominees in the Young People’s Literature category to read for and field questions from their books’ audience—teenagers.
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