Publishers Weekly January 10, 2022

The American Booksellers Association canceled the 2022 Winter Institute scheduled for February 13–16 in Cincinnati due to concerns over the recent surge in Covid cases. The association expects to announce plans for a virtual conference this week. Danny Caine, owner of the Raven Book Store in Lawrence, Kans., sold a 49% stake in the store to a group of seven employees. RBmedia entered the German audiobook market using a two-step approach: forming RBmedia Verlag and acquiring German audiobook publisher ABOD. New York governor Kathy Hochul vetoed the state’s library e-book bill, which would have required publishers that offer e-books to consumers in New York to also offer to license the works to libraries on “reasonable” terms. Publishers praised the move, while library groups pledged to continue to fight for fair pricing. OverDrive reported some 506 million…

Driven by a host of big-selling titles on politics and social justice issues, unit sales of print books rose 8.2% in 2020 over 2019, leading many in the industry to wonder how trade sales would fare in 2021. But with all the fiction categories posting solid gains, unit sales increased 8.9% last year over 2020 at outlets that report to NPD BookScan, which captures approximately 85% of all print sales. The YA fiction category had the largest increase, with unit sales jumping 30.7%, while adult fiction sales rose 25.5%. Sales in juvenile fiction increased 9.6%. A number of YA titles benefitted from support from TikTok users, including They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera, released in December 2018. It was the #1 title in the category last year, selling nearly…

Dav Pilkey, the 2019 PW Person of the Year, continued his yearslong remarkable sales performance in 2021. Pilkey boasted three of the year’s top 25 bestselling print books overall and five of the top 25 on the children’s print list, and was #1 overall with the 10th and latest entry in his Dog Man series, Mothering Heights, with sales nearing 1.3 million. Jeff Kinney, of Diary of a Wimpy Kid fame, also placed three books on the list, including Big Shot, the 16th Wimpy Kid entry, at #3 overall. Juvenile fiction sales did well last year in general, posting a 9.6% increase over 2020 at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. At #2 on the list was American Marxism, the latest from conservative radio and Fox News host Mark R. Levin,…

Approximately one year after Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt tapped Emily Meehan to reinvent the retailer’s publishing operation, Meehan has unveiled a new name for the press as well as a host of new initiatives. Union Square & Co. is the new public-facing name of what has been known as Sterling Publishing. Meehan explained that the underlying business will still be called Sterling Publishing, but that all books will be released under the Union Square & Co. and Union Square Kids imprints, plus two existing imprints: Sterling Ethos and Puzzlewright. Books bearing the Union Square name will roll out this fall, while the publisher’s website and email addresses will be updated January 10. Meehan said she is keeping the Sterling Ethos and Puzzlewright names because they are so well known in…

After falling 4% in 2020, the Publishers Weekly Stock Index had a strong rebound in 2021, rising 32%—well ahead of the 18.7% gain posted by the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Last year saw a reversal of fortune for several companies on the PWSI, particularly for Educational Development Corp. and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. At the end of 2020, HMH’s stock price had fallen 46.7% from the beginning of that year, as the company staggered under slow demand for K–12 educational publishing materials and another round of layoffs while working to reposition itself as a technology learning company. In 2021, HMH’s stock price skyrocketed 383.5%, as the company began showing signs that it was executing its new strategy, selling its trade division to News Corp and using the proceeds to pay down its…

DEAL OF THE WEEK Valdés Does Double at Thomas & Mercer In a six-figure acquisition, Liz Parsons at Thomas & Mercer bought the thrillers Hollow Beasts and Blood Mountain by Alisa Lynn Valdés (The Dirty Girls Social Club). The world English rights agreement was brokered by Alicia Brooks at the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency. The books both feature Jodi Luna, a game warden who, Brooks said, is “an honorable, powerful, alluring Latina heroine who will stop at nothing to get justice for the voiceless.” Roc Lit Takes on Lemieux’s ‘She Bad’ For Penguin Random House’s Roc Lit 101 imprint, Kierna Mayo bought She Bad: Tales of Love, Hate and Bad Motherhood by Jamilah Lemieux. PRH called the essay collection a “bold testament to the multifaceted Black single mother and an invitation to all…