By Siobhan O’Leary Random House parent Bertelsmann has announced its final results for 2010, the year of its 175th anniversary, showing signs nearly across the board that cost-saving measures and digital expansion are having a positive impact. Revenues for the Bertelsmann Group as a whole increased by 4.5% to €15.8 billion in 2010 and profits jumped from €35 million to …
A Million-Copy Besteller at Age 93: Stéphane Hessel and Indignez vous!
Stéphane Hessel is France’s 93-year old publishing phenomenon with his 14-page political essay, Indignez vous! released in October 2010
Fallen Angels Take Berlin
by Siobhan O’Leary To promote the newly released German edition of Lauren Kate’s New York Times bestselling novel Fallen (Engelsnacht in German) — a book about a teenager who falls for a fallen angel — German publisher and Random House division cbt Verlag set an unusual marketing team on the loose in Berlin last week. Five teens were professionally made …
Junkies on the Nile: Egyptians Addicted to Drug-Fuelled Debut Novel
By Chip Rossetti CAIRO: For the past two years, Egypt’s bestselling novel has been a story about a group of privileged young Cairenes whose comfortable lives are shattered by heroin. Weighing in at a hefty 635 pages, Essam Youssef’s first novel, A ¼ Gram, sheds light on the taboo problem of drug use among Egypt’s upper-middle class. Set in the …
Inside the Secret World of Literary Scouts (Part III)
By Emily Williams In Part I we looked at the essentials of how scouting works and in Part II we discussed the changes scouting is going through. Today we look at what the future might hold for scouts. The close professional ties scouts develop with their clients, sometimes over decades, are key to the role those scouts play in helping …
The Best Year-End Book Lists You Never Knew Existed
Editorial by Andy Selsberg At the end of each year, our innate human itch for lists gets pretty well-scratched: best, worst, and most-seen movies, top songs, choicest quotes, most salacious scandals, hottest web memes—you name it. When it comes to books, I admit I’m often more excited about reading bestseller lists than I am about reading the bestsellers. I think …
Bestsellers and Others, What Other Book Lists Do You Want?
By Edward Nawotka In our lead editorial today, Andy Selsberg suggests a number of new book-related lists he’d like to see, ranging from “biggest advances and smallest books sold” to “the most-purchased but least-read books “ to “the ten most read and loved literary sentences.” If you’ve not read the editorial, please take a moment to do so (you won’t …
German Buch News: 72% of Germans Don’t Read Bestseller Lists; eBuch Offers DIY Online Bookstores to Members
By Siobhan O’Leary According to a survey conducted by the Emnid Institute for the Bild am Sonntag newspaper, 72% of Germans don’t look to bestseller lists to help them decide which books to buy. Of the 27% of German’s who do look to bestseller lists for direction, most were women, and 35% of those allow lists to influence their purchases, compared …
Bonus Material: Cheat Sheet to What the Yanks and Brits are Selling in Frankfurt
By Edward Nawotka US trade journal Publishers Weekly and the UK’s Book Brunch have compiled a helpful listing of titles that various literary agents are looking to sell rights to at the forthcoming Frankfurt Book Fair. Dubbed “The Frankfurt Suitcase,” it’s a great way to get up to speed on all those deal announcements you missed this past year and …
German Buch News: Humorous Happiness Guide Tops 800,000 Copies Sold
By Siobhan O’Leary Rowohlt has taken the unusual step of repackaging the latest book by “medical comedian” Dr. Eckard von Hirschhausen, the happiness guide Glück kommt selten allein…” (Luck rarely comes alone…) as a limited edition of 150,000 copies that includes a diary with quotations from the author, a set of postcards, a CD of the author reading from the …