BTW News Briefs

Here’s what’s happening this week in the book industry:

FedEx announced that it will not apply residential surcharges during the holiday season, which will help ABA member stores save on holiday shipments. Members looking for more savings on shipping costs can enroll in the ABA Shipping Program with PartnerShip, a free service for ABA member stores. For more information, booksellers can call PartnerShip at (800) 599-2902 or e-mail [email protected].

The Book Industry Charitable (Binc) Foundation’s weeklong Bank on Booksellers Piggy Bank Auction raised $21,723. Authors, illustrators, and celebrities decorated and donated more than 100 piggy banks to raise money for Binc, which helps booksellers across the country in need of emergency financial assistance.

Reed Exhibitions has announced that in the fall, Ed Several, a senior vice president at the company who took over the direction of this year’s BookExpo and BookCon, will leave the company. Reed has named BookExpo and BookCon event manager Jenny Martin as Several’s replacement for the foreseeable future.

Publishers Weekly, in association with the Frankfurt Book Fair, named Francesca Cavallo and Elena Favilli, co-creators of Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls (Timbuktu Labs), as the top honorees at this year’s PW Star Watch event. Cavallo and Favilli were awarded trips to the upcoming Frankfurt Book Fair.

Barnes & Noble has opened a sixth concept store, this time at The Mall in Columbia, Maryland. The 17,000-square-foot store has a 700-square-foot space for community events, as well as a cafe serving coffee, desserts, and light fare; community tables; a section dedicated to local authors and regional titles; and an extensive young adult section.

Baker & Taylor Publisher Services has signed sales and distribution agreements with five new independent publisher clients: Distanz in the U.S. and Canada; Jacaranda Books Arts Music in the U.S., Canada, and internationally, excluding Spain and Portugal; Amsterdam University Press in the U.S. and Canada; and KWiL Publishing in the U.S. and Canada. It will start selling and distributing Arcler Education in the U.S., Canada, and internationally on October 1.

Sounds True Publishing will now be distributed by Macmillan. Effective May 1, 2019, Macmillan will handle North American sales and distribution for all physical titles from the independently owned publisher of books on the mind/body/spirit based in Boulder, Colorado.

Beacon Press has announced a multi-year extension of its sales and distribution partnership with Penguin Random House Publisher Services. The press first signed the agreement in 2010.

Educational services publisher Kaplan Test Prep has acquired Barron’s Educational Series, including the company’s test prep, study aid, and foreign language assets and the Barron’s brand name. Terms of the deal, which combines two of the oldest and best-known educational/test-prep book brands, were not disclosed.  

HarperCollins Christian Publishing announced that senior vice president and group publisher David Moberg will retire in June 2019, and Brian Hampton, current senior vice president and publisher of Nelson Books, is slated to fill his role. Hampton will also sit on the company’s executive leadership team and report directly to President and CEO Mark Schoenwald.

Mark Tauber has joined Chronicle Books as managing director of a new publishing imprint, set to launch in fall 2019. Tauber previously worked at HarperCollins, where he served as senior vice president and publisher of HarperOne from 2005 to 2017. The new imprint, which has yet to be named, will focus on narrative and inspirational nonfiction.

The University Press Group (U.S.) Limited (UPG) has hired Simon Gwynn as the company’s new managing director, effective November 5. Gwynn will lead an international team of sales professionals and coordinate international sales support for the University of California Press, Columbia University Press, the MIT Press, and Princeton University Press in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.

At Sourcebooks, Heather Moore was promoted to director of marketing at Jabberwocky; she was previously senior marketing manager at Jabberwocky. In addition, Valerie Pierce was promoted to director of marketing, retail, and creative services; she was previously senior marketing manager, retail and creative services.

At DK, Carol Stokke has been promoted to vice president of sales; Billy Fields is the company’s new director of publishing operations; Kristin Pozzuoli has become DK’s senior marketing manager, education, and library; Laura Hernandez was promoted to DK’s marketing coordinator; and Rob Roglev, director of interactive media, is leaving the company.

Print book sales are trending upward, according to The NPD Group, as sales volume in the first half of 2018 rose 2 percent, year over year, reaching 317 million units. NPD found that the rise in print sales is due to growth in adult nonfiction titles, specifically religious books, cookbooks, and political books. “The presence of politics on the charts is unparalleled,” said Kristen Mclean, books industry analyst for NPD, with “Fire and Fury, A Higher Loyalty, and A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo all in the top 10.”

The Financial Times and McKinsey & Company have published the shortlist for the 2018 Business Book of the Year Award, which each year recognizes a work that provides the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues. The winner will be announced on November 12 at a ceremony at the National Gallery in London.

SIBA has named Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist Rick Bragg the winner of the 2019 Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Conroy Legacy Award, which was created to honor the example set by beloved Southern author Pat Conroy.

Vice president and program director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Doron Weber will receive the National Book Foundation’s 2018 Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community, which is given to an individual or organization for a lifetime of achievement in expanding the audience for books and reading.

Salt Houses (HMH), Hala Alyan’s debut novel, and We Were Eight Years in Power (One World PRH) by Ta-Nehisi Coates, were named the winners of the 2018 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for fiction and nonfiction, respectively. Inspired by the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords that ended the war in Bosnia, the prize is the only international literary peace prize awarded in the United States. 

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