Publishers Weekly

Judge Valerie Figueredo recommended that a potential consumer class action lawsuit accusing Amazon and the Big Five publishers of a conspiracy to fix e-book prices be dismissed. The case now goes to the presiding judge, who is expected to toss the lawsuit. Simon & Schuster reported a 34% jump in second-quarter sales over last year’s second period, while operating income leapt 54%. Sales were $293 million and profits hit $80 million. TikTok-driven bestsellers and Jenny Han titles drove the increases. Trinity University Press has launched two new imprints: Tinta Books, which will focus on the culture of Mexico and Mexican American life, and Terra Firma, about nature and the environment. Yvette Benavides will head Tinta. Randi Economou, most recently at Renaissance Learning, has been named the new CEO of the educational and children’s…

The Week Ahead Senior writer Andrew Albanese takes a look at the first week of testimony in the PRH-DOJ trial. publishersweekly.com/mergertrial More to Come Graphic novels reviews editor Meg Lemke talks with senior news editor Calvin Reid about two new graphic novels that received starred PW reviews: Kate Beaton’s masterful memoir Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands and Kate Gavino’s vividly rendered A Career in Books.’ publishersweekly.com/ducks-books KidsCast Scholastic announced the publication of Twenty Thousand Fleas Under the Sea, the 11th volume in Dav Pilkey’s bestselling Dog Man series, on Mar. 28, 2023. publishersweekly.com/dogman11…

Three CEOs from the Big Five were among the witnesses last week as the Department of Justice’s attempt to block Penguin Random House’s purchase of Simon & Schuster went to trial August 1 in a federal court in Washington, D.C., before Judge Florence Pan. PRH CEO Markus Dohle, whose determination to buy S&S set the stage for the events that led to the trial, took the stand Thursday and did his best to convince Pan that the proposed acquisition would be good for authors, readers, and booksellers. Among the most contentious points during Dohle’s testimony was his pledge that PRH and S&S editors would be allowed to continue to bid against one another to acquire books by highly paid authors. Dohle told government lawyers that that remains his intention, but he…

Unit sales of print books fell 5.9% in the week ended July 30, 2022, from the comparable week last year, at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. Every category but adult fiction had a decline, with adult nonfiction sales falling 12.9%. Last year at this time the adult nonfiction list was led by American Marxism by Mark Levin, which sold about 94,000 copies, followed by a new release, The Authoritative Moment by Ben Shapiro, which sold approximately 37,000 copies in its first week. In the most recent week, James Clear’s Atomic Habits was #1 in the category, selling more than 17,000 copies, while the highest-ranking new release was The Big Lie by Jonathan Lemire, whi_ sold more than 5,000 copies, putting it in ninth place on the category list. Adult…

No matter which way you look at it, sales of mass market paperbacks have been in steady decline since 2017. NPD BookScan data shows that unit sales fell 31.5% in 2021 compared to 2017, while the Association of American Publishers put the decline in dollar sales at a more disturbing 42.7% in 2020. Both data sets show more declines occurring in 2022. To be sure, the mass market paperback format has experienced ups and downs in the past. The last time PW wrote about the prospects for mass market paperbacks, in October 2014, the format was trying to recover from the shock it suffered due to the explosion of cheap e-books, especially in such important areas as romance and science fiction and fantasy. (Asked last week, during the DOJ’s trial to…

Little, Brown Signs Fleetwood’s ‘Tracks’ Nicole Fleetwood, a National Book Critics Circle Award winner, MacArthur fellow, and NYU professor, sold Between the River and Railroad Tracks at auction to Ben George at Little, Brown. The memoir is about “family and issues of safety and belonging regulated by racial, gender, and class boundaries,” the publisher said. Fleetwood’s tale of overcoming poverty to become a star academic is set against the backdrop of the story of her hometown of Hamilton, Ohio, which fell on hard times after shedding factory jobs in the 1970s and ’80s. George elaborated that in the book, Fleetwood examines “how changes in Hamilton represent changes in the nation,” and that he is pitching the title as “a Midwestern Yellow House meets Educated.” PJ Mark at Janklow & Nesbit represented…