Publishers Weekly March 21, 2022

A Book Manufacturers’ Institute survey of members found hardcover printers were running at 85% of their capacity, while printers for softcover books were at 89%. Publishers have said it’s been hard to find press time for summer books. January bookstore sales rose 11.5% over January 2021, according to preliminary estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau. Sales were $914 million, up from $820 million last year, but they were 7.7% lower than in January 2020. Sourcebooks has acquired Duopress, which primarily publishes children's books. The press will become a Sourcebooks imprint, and its founder, Mauricio Velázquez de León, will stay on as editorial director. Quarto Group’s 2021 sales rose 19% over 2020, to $151.5 million. Adjusted operating profit jumped 51%, to $16 million. Hachette Book Group will begin requiring employees to work from company…

Snow Days, the American Booksellers Association’s 2022 gathering of indie booksellers, replaced Winter Institute in Cincinnati after it was canceled due to the spread of the omicron variant. But Snow Days, which ran March 8–10, was not simply a virtual Winter Institute under a different name. It became a mashup of Winter Institute and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs’ annual AWP conference. There was, as always, a focus on the business of bookselling, but there was also a new element: a parallel emphasis on the craft of writing fiction and poetry. Reminiscent of Winter Institute, Snow Days featured rep pick sessions and one-on-one appointments with ABA reps and publishers; panels on unions, Black women bookstore owners, and mission-driven bookselling; and roundtable discussions on such topics as postpandemic business changes—plus…

Unit sales of print books fell 8.3% in the week ended Mar. 12, 2022, from the comparable week in 2021, at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. Sales in the adult nonfiction category were down 8.6% compared to the week ended Mar. 13, 2021, despite a strong showing by three new Bibles from Tyndale House. The NLT Premium Gift Bible was #1 on BookScan’s adult nonfiction list, selling more than 91,000 copies, while two other bibles hit the list with a combined 34,000 copies sold. The Wok by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt had a good debut, selling more than 33,000 copies, as did William Barr’s One Damn Thing After Another, which sold just over 23,000 copies. The 13.1% decline in juvenile fiction was due in part to another week of difficult…

For over 30 years, Nigerian writer Ben Okri has been at the forefront of international literature. The author of two dozen books, Okri is perhaps best known for his novel The Famished Road, which won the 1991 Booker Prize for Fiction. He has since been appointed as a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, an OBE for his literary contributions, and the vice president of the Caine Prize for African Writing. Yet despite his renown, Okri has not attained widespread name recognition in the United States. Other Press publisher Judith Gurewich wants that to change. Starting this year, Gurewich will roll out a plan to publish his front-and backlist titles over the next several years. Gurewich discovered Okri’s work when her son read aloud passages of his 2011 book A Time…

Berrett-Koehler Publishers, known for its books on socially responsible career paths and values-based leadership, has published nearly 1,000 titles on business, economics, social justice, and personal development since it was founded by Steven Piersanti in 1992. Piersanti, who stepped down from a leadership role in 2019 but remains a full-time acquisitions editor, touts the company’s “mission of ‘connecting people and ideas to create a world that works for all.’” BK sales first topped $10 million in 2018 but slipped to $8.9 million in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, before posting an 18% revenue gain in 2021, to $10.5 million. “We’ve heard from long-standing BK community members that 95% of American companies plateau or fold before they reach $10 million in revenue, but for the companies that achieve this milestone,…

DEAL OF THE WEEK ▪ Shearer’s ‘River’ Flows to Berkley Berkley’s Kate Seaver pre-empted North American rights to River Sing Me Home, the debut novel by Eleanor Shearer, for a reported six figures. Comparing it to Homegoing and The Vanishing Half, Berkley said the book follows “a mother’s journey across the Caribbean to find her stolen children in the aftermath of slavery.” Shearer works as a researcher at the Institute for Government think tank in London and is the granddaughter of Caribbean immigrants, as well as the goddaughter of British bestseller Jeanette Winterson. She is represented by Laurie Robertson at Peters Fraser + Dunlop. Rebecca Folland, rights director at the U.K.’s Headline Publishing Group, handled the sale to Berkley. River Sing Me Home is slated for spring 2023. ▪ St. Martin’s Nabs ‘One…