Publishers Weekly June 13, 2022

Penguin Random House Publisher Services will take over distribution of the adult and children’s print books published by Disney Publishing Worldwide next April. PRHPS will also take on distribution of Marvel Publishing’s collected editions and graphic novels to the trade. Tertulia, a free book discovery app, launched last week on iOS. Created by two Artsy veterans, the app includes a purchasing option and has a catalog of about 15 million titles. Angela Bole, current CEO of the trade association IBPA, will leave that role on November 30 to take over as CEO of the publishing technology company Firebrand Group, succeeding company founder and CEO Fran Toolan. KentWatson has been named executive director of Small Press Distribution. Watson replaces interim executive director Cindy Myers, who stepped into the role after the resignation of Brent…

The Week Ahead 74,000 audiobooks were published in 2021—a 6% increase over 2020, according to the Audio Publishers Association’s annual sales survey. Senior writer Andrew Albanese digs into the numbers. publishersweekly.com/audio-boom More to Come Senior news editor Calvin Reid interviews acclaimed cartoonist Geof Darrow about the release of Shaolin Cowboy: Cruel to Be Kin, a new series from Dark Horse that continues the bleakly hilarious journey of the Kung Fu Buddha through the ravaged landscape and psyche of America. publishersweekly.com/kung-fu-buddha Children’s Bookshelf Scholastic has acquired a new book by Caldecott Medalist Brian Selznick, Big Tree, an illustrated novel due out in April 2023. publishersweekly.com/selznick…

Another May has come and gone without BookExpo or any other in-person, industrywide spring show taking its place. As the pandemic eases, more and more publishing and publishing-related conferences, meetings, and fairs are moving from online-only events to either inperson or hybrid affairs. That has raised the question of whether there’s any interest in seeing a new national in-person trade show emerge that could gather the various segments of the book industry together in 2023. Interviews with a myriad of publishers, booksellers, and other publishing players yielded only one consensus: if a new show is to be developed, it should not look like the retired BookExpo. Indeed, no one wants a new show whose business model would rely on exhibitors taking out large, expensive booths. In the absence of in-person shows,…

Before reaching the entrance of Planet Word, Washington, D.C.’s new museum of language, visitors pass by an enormous sculptural weeping willow (designed by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer), its branches festooned with hundreds of tiny speakers. “Each speaker emits a different language, and they’re motion activated,” said Rebecca Roberts, curator of programming at Planet Word. “As you walk beneath the branches, you hear 360 different world languages close enough together that it’s hard to isolate just one. You hear a kind of global babble, surprising and a little weird, too. Before you’ve even stepped into the museum you realize that this place is going to be different.” Planet Word, which opened permanently in fall 2021, may be the world’s first museum devoted to language as a concept and not as collected material. It focuses…

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses, the modernist novel that forever changed literature, challenged the obscenity laws of its time, and that continues to awe (and frustrate) readers today. Ulysses follows protagonist Leopold Bloom over the course of a single day—June 16, 1904—as he wanders across Dublin. Today, Joyce fans around the world commune on June 16 to commemorate the Irish author in a celebration called Bloomsday. With the centennial of Ulysses’s publication, this year’s Bloomsday takes on special import. Here are six recently published books—and one soon-to-be-published one—geared toward deepening readers’ appreciation for Joyce and his masterwork, or perhaps simply giving the uninitiated a sense of what all the fuss is about. The Guide to James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ Patrick Hastings (Johns Hopkins Univ.) Ulysses Guide…

Handler Memoir Lands at Dial Penguin Random House’s Dial Press imprint has acquired world rights to a currently untitled memoir by Chelsea Handler. The book was simultaneously optioned by the production and management shingle Sugar23, which announced a joint publishing venture with PRH earlier this year. Dial said the book is “a hilarious and romantic account of Chelsea’s path from worshipping at the altar of autonomy and self-reliance to falling in love and becoming a tender, openhearted, committed-at-all-costs girlfriend,” calling it “part rom-com, part journey of self-discovery.” Whitney Frick bought the title for Dial from Pilar Queen at United Talent Agency, while Angela Ledgerwood at Sugar23 nabbed the option from UTA’s Georgia Bodnar. The publication date has not yet been announced. Ballantine Takes Lattimore’s ‘Free’ Ashton Lattimore sold her debut novel, The…