Thursday, October 08, 2015

Latest News from The Bookseller

Joanna Trollope is to move to Pan Macmillan, after being published by Transworld for more than 20 years.
Canongate
Canongate experienced a "difficult and dispiriting" 2014 in which its turnover dropped 24% to £7.9m.
In financial results posted on Companies House for the year ending December 2014, Jamie Byng, Canongate's c.e.o, said the financial performance of the business had been "very poor”, blaming the underperformance of the company's key autumn titles. However, the company said 2015 had "started well" with the publisher beating its half-year budget target.
Jonathan Buckley
Jonathan Buckley has won the  £15,000 BBC National Short Story Award for ‘Briar Road’.  
Salman Rushdie
Iran has threatened to boycott 2015's Frankfurt Book Fair taking place next week (14th-18th October), due to organisers’ selection of Salman Rushdie as a keynote speaker.
Stephenie Meyer
Twilight author Stephenie Meyer has today released a new book where the genders of the two main characters Edward Cullen and Bella Swan are reversed, Life and Death (Little, Brown).
Grandpa’s Great Escape
David Walliams has held onto the Official Top 50 number one spot for the second straight week, notching up his best-ever single week of sales.


Jessie Burton
Picador is to publish a new novel by Jessie Burton called The Muse in July 2016.  
Set in 1930s Spain and 1960s London, The Muse is the story of a young Caribbean immigrant, a bohemian artist and the mysterious painting that connects them across the decades.
Francesca Main at Picador acquired the new novel in a two-book deal with The Miniaturist in March 2013. 
Watkins Media has purchased Cygnus Book Club, adding it to the company’s portfolio which includes publishing imprints.
Watkins, which bought Watkins, Nourish, Angry Robot from Osprey last year and which will soon launch an imprint called Repeater books, also owns the Watkins Bookshop in Cecil Court, three magazines, and a range of digital platforms.
Louise O’Neill
YA author Louise O’Neill is moving to Quercus’ adult imprint with her editor Niamh Mulvey, who took on the role of senior commissioning editor of the adult list last month.
Mulvey signed world rights to two more books from O’Neill in a “significant deal” with Rachel Conway of Georgina Capel Associates.
The titles of the books are yet to be confirmed but Quercus said they will still have “YA and crossover appeal”.
Raif Badawi
Saudi blogger and activist Raif Badawi will share the 2015 PEN Pinter Prize with British poet, journalist and literary critic James Fenton. 
Badawi was named the 2015 International Writer of Courage, selected by Fenton from a shortlist of international cases of concern supported by English PEN, during a public event held this evening at the British Library in London. 
Cosmic Kids
Watkins is set to publish a new series of books from YouTube "sensation" Cosmic Kids Yoga.
The internet “phenomenon” showcase their “incredibly” popular yoga routines for children on YouTube and are the number one kids’ yoga brand worldwide, with nearly 50,000 subscribers and average viewing figures for each month reaching 150,000 hits.
The show, which offers monthly 'yoga adventures', a 'posture of the week', a range of relaxation meditations and other fun activities, is aired to children across the world and is used in thousands of schools every day.
Tom Watson
Deputy leader of the Labour Party, Tom Watson will address United, We Publish, an evening of workshops hosted by Unite and BookMachine.
Watson will discuss his role in exposing the phone-hacking scandal at News International and his book Dial M for Murdoch: News Corporation and the Corruption of Britain (Allen Lane).

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