Publishers Weekly April 4, 2022

In-person conferences have returned. This year’s Association of Writers and Writing Programs and Public Library Association conferences were held March 23–26 in Philadelphia and Portland, Ore., respectively. AWP drew roughly 6,000 in-person attendees to the City of Brotherly Love, organizers said, while PLA brought roughly 5,000 librarians to the Rose City. Each show had 1,000 additional virtual attendees. For AWP, it was a big drop from 2019’s attendance, but the numbers were nearly twice those of its 2020 outing. For PLA, this year’s attendance was a record. Meanwhile, the New York Toy Fair is taking a different tack: it won’t return in person until September 2023. Maryland’s library e-books law still hangs in the balance. Again declining to appeal a preliminary injunction issued last month, Maryland attorneys now have until April…

The Week Ahead Masks were required at this year’s Public Library Association conference, and for the library community “that was not a problem,” senior writer Andrew Albanese says. “If any group is sensitive to personal safety, it is the library community.” publishersweekly.com/pla-22 More to Come The hosts take a look at the new comics venture Zestworld, which just snagged $9 million in new investment funding. publishersweekly.com/zest Children’s Bookshelf We spoke with social justice icon and former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick about his debut picture book, I Color Myself Different, and writing as an extension of his advocacy. publishersweekly.com/kaepernick…

The second year of a global pandemic was not enough to stop the country’s four largest trade publishers from posting impressive gains in earnings in 2021 over 2020. The largest gain came at Simon & Schuster, whose operating income soared 51.1% in the year. Lagardère publishing, parent company of Hachette Book Group, saw recurring EBIT jump 42.7%, while HarperCollins had a 15.5% increase in EBITDA. Penguin Random House’s operating EBITDA increased 9.2%, on a 6% rise in revenue. Global revenue at PRH increased to €4 billion, and earnings were €755 million, parent company Bertelsmann reported. The company’s margin improved to 18.7%, from 18.2% in 2020. The U.S. accounted for 56.5% of total revenue (about $2.51 billion at the current exchange rate), down from 58.6% in 2020. Bertelsmann limited its comments on the…

Many of the new comics publishers hitting the scene over the past few years seem to be fighting over the same audience: genre fans who have outgrown superheroes but not superhero-style comics storytelling. Z2 Comics, an independent graphic novel publisher that evolved into its current business model in 2019, is forging a different path to market while sticking closely to the aesthetics that hardcore comics fans know and love. Z2 has published more than 50 titles over the past two and a half years, almost all based on IP licensed from the music industry. This material ranges from prestige-oriented biographies of figures like jazz legend Charlie Parker to a just-announced collaboration with RZA from Wu-Tang Clan, and includes forays into rock, country music, EDM, heavy metal, thrash/punk, hip-hop, and more. In…

When I first tried to get into publishing in my early 20s,” said Nadxieli Nieto, executive editor at Flatiron Books, “there just weren’t positions for people like me.” As a result, she took an unconventional path into publishing. She began her career doing marketing for subsidiaries of the Economist. But Nieto, who holds an MFA in poetry and creative writing from Syracuse University, always knew that literature was her calling. She pursued art book publishing with various indie and university presses, working on books and illustrated anthol-ogies with what she called a “social justice through line.” In 2004, she edited Carteles contra una guerra, an art book against the Iraq War that won the prestigious Premis Ciutat de Barcelona. Several of her collaborative artist books can now be found in the…

DEAL OF THE WEEK Riverhead Enters Vardiashvili’s ‘Forest’ Riverhead’s Sarah McGrath bought North American rights to Leo Vardiashvili’s debut novel in an overnight preempt. The publisher said Hard by a Great Forest is about a Georgian father and son seeking asylum in Europe following the 2008 occupation of South Ossetia by Russia. Later they “must return to their decaying but still beautiful homeland to rescue each other and make peace with the past.” The author, a refugee from Georgia who has been living in London since he was 13, was represented by Sara O’Keefe at the London office of Aevitas Creative Management. At press time, the novel had sold in preempts in Brazil, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Romania, and the U.K. Nguyen’s ‘Sunshine’ Graces Atria For six figures, Loan Le at Atria Books,…