Latest news from The Bookseller

Mockingbird sings again on bestseller chart Last week's surprise announcement of a forthcoming To Kill a Mockingbird sequel has propelled Harper Lee's classic novel up the charts, with the book bursting into the UK Official Top 50 for the first time in almost five years.  Meanwhile, J K Rowling has scored her second overall number one writing under her Robert Galbraith pseudonym.

Headline snaps up Hughes' 'The Letter' Headline has signed The Letter, a debut novel by Kathryn Hughes which hit number one on the Amazon Kindle chart as a self-published e-book.   The Letter, which tells the story of two women whose lives become entwined when one discovers a letter that was written in 1939 but never sent, was originally published via Matador. It spent over 130 days in the Kindle top 100 and has garnered almost 2,000 Kindle reader reviews.

Chicken House partners with film company Altitude Chicken House and Altitude, a film production company, are teaming up to develop book and film projects simultaneously. “Instead of waiting for a final book to take into movie production, we will find scripts or treatments together and develop them at the same time,” said Barry Cunningham, m.d. and publisher at Chicken House. “So if someone has a great idea and has written three or four chapters, we can get involved at that stage.”

Online presence for Dick King-Smith The family of late children’s author Dick King-Smith is bringing his work into the 21st century by creating a website to promote his books online. The website goes live today (11th February) and features a biography, fun facts, a quiz, and resources for teachers of key stage one and two. There will also be links to YouTube clips of adaptations of his work, which included the film "Babe", adapted from his book The Sheep-Pig, and the TV show "The Queen’s Nose".

Beech debut to Orenda Indie start-up publisher Orenda Books has acquired a debut novel by playwright and short story writer Louise Beech. How to be Brave is described by Orenda Books publisher Karen Sullivan as a “stunning first novel” and was inspired by Louise’s own struggle with her daughter’s illness and the true story of her grandfather’s extraordinary ordeal at sea in 1943, when his ship was torpedoed and he survived for 50 days on a lifeboat in the south Atlantic. Sullivan acquired world rights directly from the author.

Male writers feature on RNA shortlists Three male authors are among the many writers shortlisted for the Romantic Novel Awards 2015 (full lists below), which are traditionally overwhelmingly dominated by women. Stephen Burke is shortlisted in the Historical Romantic Novel category for his novel The Good Italian by (Hodder & Stoughton). Meanwhile in the Romantic Comedy Novel category, David Atkinson’s Love Byte (Buried River Press) is shortlisted alongside The Best Thing That Never Happened To Me by Jimmy Rice and Laura Tait (Corgi).

Tom Chicken made Transworld sales director Tom Chicken has been appointed as Transworld’s sales director following Sarah Roscoe’s move to sales director for Penguin Random House Children’s. Chicken originally joined Penguin on the graduate business management scheme in 2002, going on to manage field and key account sales teams, as well as growing sales and developing business relationships with physical and digital retailers including Waterstones, Asda, Amazon, Audible and Apple.

Third year for Yodel at World Book Night Yodel will deliver books for World Book Night for the third year in a row.  The courier, which came under scrutiny before Christmas when it stopped collecting parcels from retailers in December due to an avalanche of online orders, has been chosen by The Reading Agency as World Book Night’s official delivery partner again.

More Hachette authors join Gateway Gateway, Orion's science fiction and fantasy e-book publisher, will be adding several well-known authors from Orbit, Hodder & Stoughton and Headline to its website. Gateway is part catalogue site, part gateway to online retailers and part social network for readers who wish to discuss and recommend authors. Since its launch in 2011,  it has gained a catalogue of almost 3,000 titles and over 200 authors.

Alison Moore to judge second Novella Award Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author Alison Moore will head the judges for this year’s Novella Award (previously the MMU Novella Award). The award was launched by Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) last year with the aim to discover writers of unpublished novellas and raise the novella’s profile in the literary world.