Percival Everett’s ‘James,’ a retelling of ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ from Jim’s perspective, lands at #3 on our hardcover fiction list. Plus Dog Man graphic novelist Dav Pilkey pays it forward, and ‘Ghost Town Living’ author Brent Underwood stakes his claim.
Among the week's headlines: PLA 2024 is on deck for next week in Columbus and with a new opening speaker; Washington passes a bill to protect libraries; and federal library funding will remain stable for 2024, but next year's budget battle is already heating up.
Plans to audit children's books and privatize library management in Huntington Beach, Calif. are drawing criticism from censorship opponents. On March 28, council members and Authors Against Book Bans held a joint press conference to decry the measures.
Workers at Oxford University Press are threatening to strike, alleging the publishing house is moving jobs abroad and has stonewalled the union in salary negotiations.
Prolific author-illustrator Mike Thaler, best known for his many riddle books and his humorous Black Lagoon Adventures series, died on March 23; he was 87.
The closure of SPD, one of the last independent distributors remaining in the United States, is the latest blow to small presses looking for options to get their titles into bookstores and other accounts.
A proposal in ongoing contract negotiations between PEN America management and PEN America United, its staff union, has led to charges by the union that the organization’s leadership is trying to stifle union members’ free speech rights—an assertion PEN management firmly disputes.
Simon Element v-p and publisher Richard Rhorer and executive editor Stephanie Hitchcock will lead the imprint, which aims to publish 15–20 "books that help readers navigate the dynamic world of work" per year.
Kahneman's 2011 bestseller 'Thinking, Fast and Slow' exposed the psychological underpinnings of economic decision-making. His research earned him a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002.
Princeton University Press has won the 2024 R.R. Hawkins Award for excellence in scholarly publishing for 'The Voices of Nature: How and Why Animals Communicate' by Nicolas Mathevon—the second year in a row the press has taken the honor home.
Vroman’s Bookstore will close its Hastings Ranch Vroman’s location in Pasadena on May 12, saying that it was “unable to reach an agreement with the property owner” due to “increasing occupancy expenses.”
Romantasy was added as a category in the Goodreads Choice Awards in 2023—a fact mentioned several times at the inaugural Romantasy Literary Genre Festival, held March 22–24 at the Otherworld Theater in Chicago.
The 1,225 publishers that report sales to the Association of American Publishers’ StatShot program saw sales rise 0.4% in 2023 over 2022, according to preliminary data. Generally speaking, it was a good year for religious titles and a rough one for children's books, and audiobook sales continued to grow.
A series of acquisitions made in 2023 helped boost sales at Penguin Random House in 2023, but higher costs led to worldwide earnings slipping by roughly $2.17 million, to about $720 million.
French author-illustrator Laurent de Brunhoff, acclaimed for carrying on the legacy of beloved character Babar the elephant, first illustrated by his father Jean, died on March 22; he was 98.
The briefs are the latest development in the long-running copyright infringement case, following the publishers' opening appeal brief filed earlier this month, and comes nearly one year after judge John G. Koeltl unequivocally found the scanning and lending of print library books to be copyright infringement. The Internet Archive’s reply brief is now due on April 19.