Publishers Weekly May 30, 2022

The Raven Book Store in Lawrence, Kans., was named PW’s Bookstore of the Year, and Seattle-based commission rep Kurtis Lowe of Book Travelers West was named PW’s Sales Rep of the Year, in a presentation made at the U.S. Book Show. “This is a team win,” Raven owner Danny Caine said in accepting the award. “Everything we’ve accomplished is 100% thanks to the truly wonderful Raven team.” Caine added that he believes “the future of bookselling is booksellers,” and that “the best way to ensure that bookstores have a seat at the table is to foster a new generation of talented and enthusiastic booksellers.” For his part, Lowe offered thanks to all the booksellers “who commit an act of courage every day by opening their doors to show us that…

More to Come Senior news editor Calvin Reid interviews Chris Giliberti, CEO of Zestworld, a new subscription-based digital comics venture, about the company’s vision to create a new comics marketplace for original creator-owned comics. publishersweekly.com/zestworld Children’s Bookshelf In the months since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, the international publishing community has come together with a number of initiatives aimed at offering support to children’s authors, publishers, and aid organizations. publishersweekly.com/ukraine-aid…

Though trade book sales did surprisingly well during the pandemic, speakers during the U.S. Book Show, sponsored by PW and held virtually May 23–26, looked for ideas to move ahead in the face of persistent supply chain problems, intense book banning efforts, new hybrid work models, and the likelihood that sales will fall this year. (For more coverage of USBS, go to publishersweekly.com/pw/edition/usbs.) In a panel on building a healthy publishing ecosystem, IPG CEO Joe Matthews said that after enjoying a bounce during the first two years of the pandemic, industry sales in 2022 could fall as much as 10% from 2021, as people look to spend their entertainment dollars on things other than books. Sales could also suffer from the “double whammy” of supply chain woes and inflation, he added.…

With only the adult fiction category posting gains, unit sales of print books fell 6.4% in the week ended May 21, 2022, from the comparable week last year, at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. Sales for the year to date through May 21 were also down 6.4%, compared to the similar period in 2021. Adult nonfiction continued to struggle, with sales falling 11% despite a host of new titles hitting high up on the category list. The Office BFFs by Jenna Fischer was #1 in the category, selling more than 26,000 copies in its first week. Last year at this time, John Green’s The Anthropocene Reviewed was #1, selling more than 57,000 copies. Other new nonfiction books that had solid debuts were Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Mulitverse, which…

A student of history at Oxford, of Arabic and history in Syria, and of archaeology in Israel, Sweet brings his extensive educational background to bear on the past in order to prove his thesis that sometimes might is right. “Fighting itself is neither moral nor immoral; only its object can be said to be so,” Sweet says, offering an all-too-current situation as an example. “The Ukrainians fighting to evict the Russians from their country is an example of a moral object.” But the battlefield isn’t the only setting Sweet examines. Among other settings ripe for conflict are politics and business, and he chose some of history’s most influential individuals to guide the journey, including Julius Caesar, Cardinal Richelieu, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Bill Gates. Two of these five, Napoleon…

An online survey of the Ukrainian book market undertaken by Anastasiia Zagorui on behalf of Ukrainian trade publication Chytomo was conducted from March 26 to April 8. Eighty-one publishers participated in the survey, which examines how the publishing community has adapted to wartime conditions; of those, 10% said they were forced to stop their operations, including 4mamas Publishing House, Abrykos, Booksha, DIPA, Mamino, Oleksandr Savchuk, Osnova Publishing Group, and Smoloskyp. Others, such as Blym-Blym, Ïzhak, and Klio, have been severely compromised. The majority of publishers, 51%, continue to publish but have altered their operating models, taking such measures as reducing their working hours. Thirty-nine percent of publishers had not changed their models when the survey was taken. In one comment, the team of Creative Women Publishing said that, despite the war,…