Archives for September 2005

Place Your Nobel Bets It’s time for the annual rumors about who will win the Nobel Prize for Literature — but since the Swedish Academy does such a good job of keeping quiet (and such a good job of picking obscure writers), the rumors are modest. British bookmakers have Syrian poet Adonis as the 2-1 favorite, followed by South Korean poet Ko Un and Swedish poet Thomas Transtromer. As is often the case, Joyce Carol Oates and Milan Kundera are also among the betting favorites. The winner will be named on October 6. Also on the never-ending awards front, the […]

Covering the Used Books Coverage Following yesterday’s preview of the BISG study, here are short glimpses of how the traditional press positioned the results: The WSJ focuses on “slightly used books” that are highly visible on Amazon.com — though the BISG study offered no specific data on these offerings. As usual, agents would like to see payments made to authors on these sales (which will never happen) and publishers wish Amazon wouldn’t push “used” sales of new titles so much (which will also never happen). WSJ The AP goes for the big overall number of $2.2 billion even though that’s […]

Used But Not Discarded At the BISG’s annual meeting today, the marquee event was the presentation of summary data from their Used Book Study (the full study is still being prepared, and will not be released until next month). The best part of the study, conducted by market research firm InfoTrends and presented by Jeffrey Hayes, was sealed from the beginning: Hard data was gathered from essentially all of the major players in this emerging business: Amazon, eBay, Abebooks, Alibris, Barnes & Noble, Biblio, Powell’s and others, combined with surveys of booksellers, industry groups, and consumers. The broad strokes didn’t […]

San Francisco Reads, Too Gus Lee’s autobiographical novel CHINA BOY is the first selection for San Francisco’s One City One Book program. The SF Chronicle files a long piece about the author and the book. SF Chron Angel Has a Date with Oprah UNLIKELY ANGEL, the book by Ashley Smith — the Atlanta-area woman who has held hostage and talked her way to freedom in part by reading from THE PURPOSE-DRIVEN LIFE to her captor — releases today. And Oprah hosts her tomorrow. Morrow says they are printing 400,000 copies. Atlanta Journal-Constitution On Peck Bestselling author of THE ROAD LESS […]

National Bookings The Library of Congress says they drew about 90,000 people on Saturday for the fifth annual National Book Festival on the Mall in Washington, DC. Among the more popular signings, they report in a press release, were Neil Gaiman, who signed 500 books, and Sue Monk Kidd, who signed 350 books. David McCullough signed over 700 books and posed with a “life-size Book Worm” to celebrate his winning of the Reading Advocacy Award presented by Half Price Books. Coverage in the NYT focuses on which authors attended a White House breakfast and which ones declined for political reasons. […]

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