Publishers Weekly

HarperCollins and the HC union agreed to employ an independent mediator as a way to move their stalled negotiations forward. Some 240 union employees have been on strike since November 10. William Morrow’s Emily Krump and Jessica Williams have each been promoted to v-p and editorial director for William Morrow Fiction, while Mauro DiPreta has been promoted to senior v-p and editorial director for William Morrow Nonfiction. Julia Reidhead, chairman and president of W.W. Norton & Company, was elected chair of the Association of American Publishers for the 2023–2024 term. Page Street Publishing is launching Page Street YA this spring, an imprint dedicated to the company’s growing teen readership. Under the brand, Page Street expects to double the number of annual YA releases to 24 titles by 2024. Chuck Morrell, a longtime book sales…

Kristen McLean, industry analyst for U.S. books at the NPD Group, predicted in a webinar last week that 2023 will be a year of transition for the publishing industry. McLean noted that even with unit sales of print books down 6% in 2022 from 2021, sales last year were the second-highest in BookScan’s more than 20-year history. But she warned that sales are likely to be down for at least the first half of this year, as both publishing and the overall economy continue to adjust to changes caused by the pandemic. McLean sees 2023 as a year when publishers will look to balance the need for stability with the need for innovation. She expects publishers to have conservative approaches to acquiring new content as they determine where new growth opportunities…

In a new memoir, Steve Rubin, the well-connected publishing executive who started at Bantam Books and spent a large part of his career at Random House before moving to Macmillan, provides a top-down look at the industry. It is a view that filmmakers would likely gravitate to if they wanted to depict the glamorous side of publishing—working with famous authors and celebrities, all while earning a hefty salary. This behind-the-scenes look is combined with an unexpected no-holds-barred critique of some of publishing’s best-known executives, as well as firsthand accounts of various corporate machinations. Publishing insiders will, in turn, be intrigued by Rubin’s account of some of the industry’s biggest deals, and shocked by his frank appraisals of some of its major players. In Words and Music, out from Rowman & Littlefield’s…

Author Chelsea Hodson has always been drawn to the fringes of publishing. Early in her career as a writer, she found that her favorite books were “weirder, riskier books than ones I might find at a more mainstream publishing house,” she said. Now, she’s staking a claim for herself on those fringes: this year, Hodson will launch her own indie press, Rose Books. Hodson is best known for her essay collection Tonight I’m Someone Else, published by Holt in 2018. Before moving to Sedona, Ariz., in 2021, she’d been a fixture of the New York City literary scene for nearly a decade. It was there that she got her start in the world of small presses. Her first chapbook, Pity the Animal, was published by Kevin Sampsell at Future Tense Books…

Renkl ‘Comforts’ Spiegel & Grau Joey McGarvey, in her first acquisition at Spiegel & Grau, bought world rights to Margaret Renkl’s The Comfort of Crows. The book from the New York Times opinion columnist and bestseller, which is subtitled A Backyard Year, is, S&G said, “a literary devotional that charts the passing of seasons, both personal and natural.” The Comfort of Crows was sold by Kristyn Keene Benton at ICM/CAA and features four-color art by Renkl’s brother and frequent collaborator Billy Renkl. It’s slated for October. Dell Makes Kumar ‘Mine’ Say You’ll Be Mine, the debut novel by Naina Kumar, was preempted in a two-book, North American rights agreement by Dell’s Kara Cesare. Johanna Castillo at Writers House sold the book, which Dell said was pitched as “My Best Friend’s Wedding meets…

HOUSE PROUD Grady Hendrix lands at #5 on our hardcover fiction list with How to Sell a Haunted House, a “wildly entertaining” tale, per our review, animated by “grief, generational trauma, and some sinister puppets.” In a prepub interview with PW, Hendrix speculated on the enduring fascination with ghostly domiciles. “We really like to form connections with things that aren’t human,” he said. “Maybe it’s a two-way street and the place has feelings about you back.” RECENT FIRST-WEEK PRINT UNIT SALES FOR GRADY HENDRIX NEW & NOTABLE THE CREATIVE ACT Rick Rubin #2 Hardcover Nonfiction, #4 overall The Grammy-winning music producer debuts with “a meditative manual on how to boost one’s creativity,” according to our review. “The dispatches read like ancient spiritual texts in their Zen-like wisdom, as when Rubin writes, ‘Accessing childlike spirit in our art…