Friday, May 08, 2015

Latest trade news from The Bookseller

The book trade is facing more library cuts and an uncertain future in Europe and at the department for Business, Industry and Skills, industry figures say, as they digest the results of the general election, emerging overnight.
With almost all results declared, the national picture is currently showing the Conservatives on 317 seats, Labour on 228, the Scottish National Party surging forward to 56 and the Liberal Democrats plunging to just eight.  
The invoiced value of UK publishers’ annual sales remained absolutely flat year on year in 2014, with a top-line total of £4.3bn, precisely the same as 2013.
The figure combines publishers’ revenues from both physical and digital editions and from journals’ income, and is revealed in the Publishers Association’s PA Statistics Yearbook 2014.
Sarah Odedina
Sarah Odedina, former m.d. of Hot Key Books, is to join Oneworld in the role of children’s publisher, overseeing its Young Adult and children’s publishing. Oneworld announced last year that it would launch a YA imprint, Rock the Boat.
Oneworld publisher Juliet Mabey said hiring Odedina was like “sticking our flag in the ground” because she “is one of the most highly regarded editors in the children’s book market, and having someone of her quality shows the trade how much we really want to publish great books”.
Independent Bookshop Week
Deals on Picador Classics, exclusive editions published by Macmillan and money off Hachette Children’s Books series are among the promotions being offered to indies in celebration of Independent Bookshop Week (IBW).
Orion Children's Books
Helen Thomas will this July join Orion Children’s Books as editorial director.

Thomas, who is currently fiction editorial director at Scholastic, will acquire titles across the Orion Children’s and Indigo YA lists, and will report to m.d. and publisher Fiona Kennedy.

“We’re delighted to welcome Helen to the Orion Children’s team as our editorial director and look forward to working with her,” said Kennedy. “Her experience and keen eye for the very best books will make a great contribution to our list.”
 

Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is to relaunch its Young Writer of the Year Award, with backing from literary agency Peters Fraser & Dunlop (PFD). For the first time, the prize will consider self-published authors.
Greg Eden
Waterstones online content manager Greg Eden is departing the chain.
Eden leaves this week in order to move to Norfolk for family reasons.
He joined Waterstones in 2006, after roles at Ottakars Head Office and at Bertrams. Before becoming online content manager, he occupied the roles of content editor and social media manager for the high street chain.
Jude Law
Actor Jude Law is set to appear at this year’s Hay Festival.

He will be taking part in the Letters Live event taking place on Sunday 24th May, alongside fellow actors Stephen Fry, Louise Brealey and Sarah Lancashire,  author Colm Toibin, writer and TV broadcaster Sandi Toksvig and writer and editor Andrew O’Hagan, among others.

Gordon Burn
Hilary Mantel, Martin Amis and Dan Davies have made the 13-strong longlist for the Gordon Burn Prize 2015, which "champions a fresh, fearless approach to writing".
 

Oscar's Book Prize
Author and illustrator Steve Antony has won this year’s Oscar’s First Book Prize for The Queen’s Hat (Hodder Children’s Books).

The £5,000 prize was set up last year by the Evening Standard in memory of Oscar Ashton, the son of the paper’s executive editor and columnist James Ashton, who died in 2012 at the age of three-and-a-half from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. It is open to books for children aged five and under and is sponsored by Waitrose.
 

Angela Huth
Long Barn Books, the publishing company owned by author Susan Hill, is releasing Angela Huth’s new book Colouring In on 27th May (priced £9.99).
Huth is best known for her 1995 novel Land Girls (Little, Brown), which was adapted into a film starring Rachel Weisz and Anna Friel in 1998. Huth wrote Colouring In “a few years ago” but it was turned down by several publishers before Hill took it on.
Ari Gold
Headline is to publish a book this month on leadership “by” Hollywood agent Ari Gold – a character in the television series “Entourage”.
The Gold Standard: Rules to Rule By will “draw from Gold’s years of dominating the Hollywood agency scene and offer invaluable tips and advice on how to be as successful in work and in life as Gold himself”.
Headline will publish on 12th May in £14.99 hardback, £7.99 e-book and in audiobook format.
Gold is a character on “Entourage”, a television series about an actor and his group of friends and hangers-on.

No comments: