Tuesday, April 14, 2015

The latest news from The Bookseller

Two Roads has acquired two novels by actress and ex-"Blue Peter" presenter Janet Ellis in a deal done just before the London Book Fair.
Meanwhile Chatto & Windus, Hodder & Stoughton, Serpent's Tail and Penguin Press are among the other publishers announcing pre-LBF deals.
Lisa Highton, publisher at John Murray imprint Two Roads, bought UK rights to Janet Ellis’ first novels from Gordon Wise at Curtis Brown. The books, the first of which is A Little Learning; Or, The Butcher’s Hook, were both submitted under a pseudonym.
Showrooming is just a “genteel form of shoplifting” author David Nicholls told an audience at the London Book Fair Digital Minds Conference this morning (13th April). 
Giving a keynote speech at the digital event ahead of the fair's official start tomorrow (14th April), Nicholls spoke of the importance of physical bookshops, and criticized the practice of discovering a title in a bookshop only to buy it online instead, known as showrooming. 
The British Museum Press is understood to be preparing to hand over frontlist and recent backlist titles to another publisher, ahead of closing down its book publishing operations.
A month after announcing its partnership with Shanghai-based Tencent Literature, Boston-based distribution and e-book-discovery start-up Trajectory Inc. has opened a suite of additional agreements pertaining to a new relationship with the major Chinese corporation Xiaomi.
A book of condolence for Ion Trwein will be opened at London Book Fair.
Trewin, who was literary director of the Booker Prize Foundation, died last week aged 71 months after being diagnosed with untreatable cancer.
Visitors to London Book Fair will be able to sign a book of condolence at the reception desk of the Orion/Hachette stand, number 6 C50, from Tuesday 14th April to Thursday 16th April.
English PEN and the author Salman Rushdie are calling for the release of South African novelist Zainub Priya Dala, who is in a mental institution in Durban.
At a literary event at a school in March, Dala praised the works of Rushdie. A day later, she was accosted by three men while she was in her car, said English PEN. They placed a knife to her throat and hit her face with a brick. English PEN said Dala believed she would have been stabbed had a minibus taxi not pulled into the vacant lot where the attack took place. 

Stoner was originally published in the US in April 1965 to little fanfare. 
Carlton Books has announced the seven official Rugby World Cup (RWC) titles it is releasing this summer as the competition’s official publisher.
Bestselling author Irvine Welsh has urged bookshops to evolve into “cultural cafés” to survive.
Speaking to The Bookseller ahead of a tour of UK and Irish bookshops to promote his latest novel, A Decent Ride (Jonathan Cape), Welsh said: “The state of affairs of bookshops [in the US] is as it is in the UK: a lot of independents here are struggling over the rise of e-books. 
Independent Centum Books will this May publish a series of titles that tie-in with the "Minions" film, after signing a licensing deal with Universal.
"Minions" is the net film in the Despicable Me franchise, produced by Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment, and tells the tale of what happens when the Minions decide to start a new life in Antarctica. It will be released in the UK in July.
The book agreement was brokered between Centum and licensing agent CPLG, acting on behalf of Universal Partnerships & Licensing.
Penguin Random House Children’s UK and The Wild Rumpus, a social enterprise that organises family arts events, are coordinating a mass-reading of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are (RHCP).
Groups of people across the UK will come together at 11am on Saturday 13th June to read the picture book. This will be led by  three large, public events in London, Manchester and Birmingham.
Dame Margaret Drabble and Nobel Laureates Günter Grass and Elfride Jelinek are among over 1,000 writers supporting PEN’s call for greater protection for refugees in Europe.
Tomorrow (14th April), a delegation including English PEN, PEN International and German PEN, will meet the president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, in Brussels to deliver the appeal officially.

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