Publishers Weekly April 18, 2022

Maryland’s library e-book law is effectively dead. In a court filing, Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh said the state would present no new evidence in a legal challenge filed by the AAP, allowing the court’s recently issued preliminary injunction blocking the law to stand and paving the way for it to be converted into a permanent injunction. Sterling Publishing acquired the gift and publishing company Knock Knock. The acquisition adds more than 600 backlist and 150 frontlist projects to Sterling’s Union Square & Co. imprint. February bookstore sales rose 27% over 2021, to $583 million, up from $459 million in February 2021. For the first two months of 2022, sales increased 17.2%, to $1.5 billion. Christian publisher David C Cook is launching Esther Press, an imprint focusing on women readers. The imprint…

The Week Ahead The party hats publishers have sported since the pandemic began two years ago may now have to come off, says senior writer Andrew Albanese: soaring book sales have finally fallen. publishersweekly.com/sales-fall More to Come The hosts take stock of new graphic novel imprints from Dark Horse, IDW, and Simon & Schuster. publishersweekly.com/new-imprint Children’s Bookshelf Young adult author Huntley Fitzpatrick, known for her realistic contemporary teen romances, died on April 8 following a long illness. She was 58. publishersweekly.com/fitzpatrick…

The upsurge in book bannings in recent months has drawn the attention of free speech groups, the library and teacher communities, and even Congress. During National Library Week, April 3–9, PEN America released a report documenting the scope of book bannings between July 1, 2021, and Mar. 31, 2022; Rep. Jamie Raskin held a hearing to examine the bookbanning problem; and EveryLibrary Institute sponsored a panel, “Censored Authors Speak.” In its report, “Banned in the USA: Rising School Book Bans Threaten Free Expression and Students’ First Amendment Rights,” PEN documented “the alarming spike in censorship of books in school districts across the country over the past nine months,” with 1,586 book bans across 26 states. PEN also found that 98% of book bans did not adhere to established guidelines for challenging…

The shift in Easter book buying this year favored the publishing industry in the week ended Apr. 9, 2022 (Easter was April 4 last year, compared to April 17 this year), resulting in a 10.2 % increase in unit sales of print books over the comparable week in 2021 at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. The children’s category led the increase, with fiction sales up 38.2% and nonfiction sales rising 26.7%. In fiction, the #1 title in the category was Tui T. Sutherland’s The Flames of Hope (Wings of Fire, Vol. 15), whichsold just under 80,000 copies in its first week. The remainder of the top 10 titles had an Easter bent, including Adam Wallace’s How to Catch the Easter Bunny, whichsold nearly 45,000 copies, putting it in second…

Montana Book Co. in Helena bills itself as one of the nation’s loudest bookstores. Co-owners Chelsia Rice and her spouse Charlie Crawford strive to provide a community hub for sharing ideas, as well as a woman-and nonbinaryled safe space for diverse voices. In addition to promoting outspoken activism, Montana Book Co. upends stereotypes about blue states and red states in the American west. The store sold “a couple of hundred” copies of Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist, Crawford said, and community members had a reasonable conversation about Kalispell author Ryan Busse’s Gunfight. On a recent March day, the store flew the pink, blue, and white transgender flag outside its front door. A sidewalk sandwich board proclaimed “Protect Trans Kids,” and a “No War” poster in the window signaled…

Pember Does Double at Pantheon In his first acquisition at Pantheon, David Treuer preempted two books by journalist Mary Annette Pember. The publisher said the North American rights agreement was struck after a nine-publisher auction and includes the author’s debut work of nonfiction, about “her mother’s experience at a Native American boarding school, their complicated relationship, and the history and ongoing trauma of America’s policy of forced assimilation of Native peoples.” The second book is “an embedded, reported book about missing and murdered Indigenous women.” The author, who was represented by Adam Eaglin at the Cheney Agency, is a national correspondent at Indian Country Today. Pantheon said the first book is slated for release in fall 2024. Knopf Takes Cisneros’s Poetry Collection Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street) sold her first…