Thursday, August 16, 2012

Sampling Amazon's First Fall Harvest


PublishersLunch

This fall, Amazon's New York-based imprint, New Harvest, will formally launch its first full season, after debuting in quiet fashion last March with JEFF, ONE LONELY GUY, by Jeff Ragsdale (with David Shields and Michael Logan.) The imprint's inaugural list, already slated to be small, is down two books: Billy Ray Cyrus's memoir HILLBILLY HEART, was pushed back to April 2013 to coincide with his next tour, while dissident Chinese poet Liao Yiwu's memoir FOR A SONG AND A HUNDRED SONGS won't be published until June 2013, the 24th anniversary of the Tianenmen Square Protests.
With New Harvest bidding to establish itself alongside the major trade houses, at least in title mix and quality if not yet in distribution, our Sarah Weinman has read much of their launch list to preview how it stacks up. One title, ELIMINATION NIGHT, by Anonymous – wasn't available for us to review at this time. And two of the nonfiction titles – THE 4-HOUR CHEF by Tim Ferriss and OUTSIDE IN by Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine – are more or less known quantities, so we have skipped them as well.
In brief, she finds Jessica Valenti's well-timed WHY HAVE KIDS? a welcome tonic, though perhaps better suited as a digital short; calls Penny Marshall's enjoyable confection of a memoir MY MOTHER WAS NUTS well worth reading; suspects that Will Wiles' debut THE CARE OF WOODEN FLOORS may have trouble finding a wide audience; and praises Benjamin Anastas's memoir TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE but wonders if the fledgling publisher and limited distribution can bring the same critical attention and sales that his former publishers FSG could have provided

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