This week! Books! Now that Workman has been acquired by Hachette and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has been acquired by HarperCollins, where have all the midsized book publishers gone? Jim Milliot at Publishers Weekly surveys this dying breed and cites the difficulty of building a backlist, the capital needed to grow into midsized publisher, and ongoing […]
Jessica Faust
Netflix goes Wonka (This week in books)
This week books! It’s been a few weeks since I’ve done a links roundup, and I have quite a few good ones to share. Let’s get to it! Netflix spent over £500 million on a golden ticket and purchased the rights to Roald Dahl’s entire catalog. They have movies, TV shows, and more planned. Jay […]
Cormac McCarthy is not on Twitter (This week in books)
This week! Books! After the sudden death of longtime Scholastic CEO Richard Robinson, there’s now a succession drama surrounding his estate that’s worthy of, well, HBO’s Succession. This would be merely the stuff of tabloids, and not fit for the esteemed halls of This Week in Books, except that control of a $1.2 billion publisher […]
The backlist is hot (This week in books)
This week! Books! It’s now officially summer in the publishing world, and happy Summer Friday to all who are celebrating by shutting their laptops around lunch time. Just a few links for your weekend pleasure Publishers Weekly hosted a virtual U.S. Book Show, and BookBub has a good roundup of some of the marketing and […]
RIP Eric Carle, creator of “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” (This week in books)
This week! Books! Lots and lots of links from the past few weeks, but first, in case you’re not a newsletter subscriber, a quick heads-up that I’m offering special “Get your writing back on track” discounts, including 25-35% off coaching sessions and a special editing package to get you unstuck. So if you’re not yet […]
98% of books released in 2020 sold less than 5,000 copies (This week in books)
This week! Books! A factoid this week about the publishing industry certainly got some eyeballs popping. In an article about how the publishing industry is weathering the pandemic, Alexandra Atler and Elizabeth A. Harris noted that 98% of the books newly published in 2020 sold fewer than 5,000 copies. Sales have inexorably drifted to the […]
