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The PRH/S&S merger heads to court (This week in books)

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This week! Books!

We’re getting into the doldrums of summer, but I still have a few links to share with you this week.

First up, there’s an auction this weekend to support two great organizations, We Need Diverse Books and NaNoWriMo! There are lots of great items to bid on, and I’m offering a thirty minute chat where we can discuss your pitch or questions you have about the business. Check it out!

A pretty momentous trial is kicking largely off the press’s radar, as Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster are set to defend their proposed merger against a Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit. If the merger goes through, it would kick off a new era of publishing that would turn the “Big 5” publishers into the Mega 1 and Big 3. Publishers Marketplace is all over the pre-trial filings ($ link).

And in other publishing legal news, unlikely bedfellows Amazon and the Big 5 publishers are trying to have a potential class action lawsuit dismissed that accuses them of fixing e-book prices.

Not sure which of these summer traditions is bigger, but former president Obama has released his summer book recommendations, and the Booker Prize announced its long list. After traditionally being a prize reserved for the British Commonwealth, six of thirteen of this year’s finalists are from the United States.

I missed this one last week, but Delia Owens, the author of Where the Crawdads Sing, is still wanted for questioning for a murder in Zambia.

It’s always a challenge to research historical fiction and then faithfully represent past eras on the page, and I really enjoyed this glimpse into how Rebecca Stott reconstructed “the darkest corner of the dark ages,” the sixth century in what is now London, which had been abandoned by the Romans for eighty years.

This week in bestsellers

Here are the top five NY Times bestsellers in a few key categories. (All links are affiliate links):

Adult print and e-book fiction:

  1. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
  2. It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover
  3. Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Daniel Silva
  4. Verity by Colleen Hoover
  5. Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover

Adult print and e-book nonfiction:

  1. The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
  2. Dirtbag, Massachusetts by Isaac Fitzgerald
  3. Thank You For Your Servitude by Mark Leibovich
  4. Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris
  5. Finding Me by Viola Davis

Young adult hardcover:

  1. These Twisted Bonds by Lexi Ryan
  2. One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus
  3. Family of Liars by E. Lockhart
  4. Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley
  5. Loveless by Alice Oseman

Middle grade hardcover:

  1. Wonder by R.J. Palacio
  2. Refugee by Alan Gratz
  3. Ground Zero by Alan Gratz
  4. Skandar and the Unicorn Thief by A.F. Steadman
  5. Stuntboy, in the Meantime by Jason Reynolds and Raúl the Third

This week on the blog

In case you missed them, here are this week’s posts:

Don’t forget that you can nominate your first page and query for a free critique on the blog:

And keep up with the discussion in all the places!

And finally, artificial intelligence-generated images are getting shockingly detailed and strange. With just the text “homer simpson’s head rendered in beautiful neon glass on a rainy night in tokyo,” DALL-E-2 can produce this. I really enjoyed Charlie Warzel’s newsletter on what it all means.

Have a great weekend!

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