33 jobs have gone at Random House following a consultation to reduce its workforce. The losses include Francesca Liversidge, Tarnsworld's senior publishing director. The company said that despite a 6% rise in sales 2008 had been a tough year.
Oneworld Publications is to launch a new fiction list after more than 20 years dedicated solely to non fiction.
It has been reported in The Bookseller that UK supermarkets have doubled their share of the book market over the last four years. The book market is currently worth double that of the DVD market for supermarkets. And sticking with the supermarkets US President Obama won the Tesco biography of the year award. His Dreams of my Father beat off competition from Paul O'Grady, Dawn French and Julie Walters. I wonder of the Archive could interview him about his favourite westerns?
Martina Cole will publish a new book this October. The book, as yet untitled, will no doubt feature strong women characters and the London underworld. Other big names with new books coming soon include James Ellroy in November with Blood's a River, Michael Connelly with The Scarecrow this May, Mark Billingham with Blood Line in August and in November James Patterson brings back Alex Cross for I, Alex Cross.
Is the bubble about to burst for the crime fiction genre? According to the latest issue of The Bookseller the Crime genre hit a four year low last year, despite a total value of £130.8 million - down 4.7% on 2007. Book buyers spent more than 1m on just eight titles. One of the biggest releases of the year Sebastian Faulk's Devil May Care sold a total of 151,212 in hardcover while the top hardcover seller for the genre was Martina Cole's The Business which sold a staggering 219,253 in hardback. The top paperback crime novel was Linwood Barclay's No Time for Goodbye which did over 643,225. The top selling true crime book was The Innocent Man by John Grisham which did 219,424.
7 comments:
I read this morning that Pres. Obama has made $2.5 million in book royalties so far. Don't know if that's for just the memoir or for the memoir and the Audacity of Hope book too. Either way, it takes your breath away.
Guess he need the money - maybe he can plow it into the economy.
I'm sorry to read about Francesca. Long ago, she was my first paperback editor. Nice person.
Book biz news always manages to surprise me, perhaps a measure of how distance from major markets and passing time have left me out of touch. Are we seeing a shift in influence? Will the trend be away from the bloated players, like Random House, to the smaller players? Perhaps even self-publishers will have their day, though I think they will have to be genuine self-publishers who can make their retail mark, not authors who have been conned by vanity-press deals into paying for the production of unsaleable books.
The increase in supermarkets' share of business is also interesting. Is it an indictment of the bookstore chains? How can the small publishers, with low-volume titles, gain a foothold in the new marketplace?
The problem with the supermarkets is the massive discounts - they were selling the new Harry Potter a couple of years back for £1 - a loss leader but where's the profit for the publisher and author?
You're right, Gary. The idea that books should be seen as part of the average consumer's everyday purchasing, like the groceries, is attractive. But the loss leader part is not.
I wonder how many of those 33 people dumped by Random House have a retail focus, and possibly even an answer. As Martin underlines, some if not all of them have talent and experience. It's hard to believe they will abandon their professional lives and passions. Perhaps some will be re-employed by smaller companies, or set up businesses of their own. Random House UK, rightly or wrongly, always appeared to me to consist of the digested remnants of many older British publishing houses, some once well-known names. Could be this is a stage in that cycle from small and varied to big and dominant and back again.
EVERLASTING
Selling Planet Earth in Exchange for a Utopia? What’s the Catch?
Humans sold planet Earth for peace, but little did they know peace would come at such a high cost.
A long time ago, Humanity sold planet Earth to a group called the Evers in order to gain peace and a virtual utopia for themselves and for future generations. However, the cost of this paradise turns out to be too much for some to deal with and the humans soon find themselves ruled cruelly by the very beings who offered them salvation and at one point given them so much hope.
Humans that were originally treated with high regards, made to feels special, are now being treated as animals, some humiliated and shipped away to some unknown fate…each being told what they could or could not do, under the guise of it being in humanities best interest.
With a feeling of dread, a small group declares war on the more advanced Evers in hopes of returning things to the way they should be…to the way they had been. John and his make-shift crew of humans and hybrids (half human/half Ever) must not only find a way to break free of the mistakes of the past and find out the disturbing secrets that the Evers have hidden away, but they must also deal with their own personal issues and learn to live, grow, and deal with each others’ emotional issues of love, regret and fear.
Will man give up youth and perfect health to live in the past? And will John take the chance of restoring Earth to its former state even though there’s a good chance his life-threatening disease can return?
Publisher’s Web site: www.eloquentbooks.com/Everlasting.html
About the Author:
Myra Evans resides in Walterboro, South Carolina, a small town near Charleston. She is a C.N.A. for a large Veterans nursing home.
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