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BEA Show Daily 2011: Brenda Warner From Rags to Riches
Brenda Warner, the wife of retired NFL star quarterback Kurt Warner, wants people to know there's much more to her than being a sports celebrity's wife and living a life of privilege. "I went through so much stuff before Kurt came into my life," she discloses. "My early life laid the foundation of who I am now." She's not kidding: Warner's memoir, One Call Away: Facing the Unexpected with Resilient Faith (Thomas Nelson, Sept.) reads like a modern-day fairy tale.
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BEA Show Daily 2011: Erik Larson When History Has Yet to Happen
History in Erik Larson's hands is both immediate and portentous: we are right there with his characters, wondering what is going to happen next. In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin (Crown, May) meticulously depicts what life was like for an American family of four living in Germany in 1933, when storm troopers began their vicious attacks and Jews were disenfranchised from their lives.
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BEA Show Daily 2011: Jane Fonda Extols the Benefits of Aging
Oscar-winning actress and author Jane Fonda is passionate about living life to the fullest at any age. In her new book, Prime Time, due from Random House in early fall, she writes about "Act III of life" (age 60 and up) with a gusto and enthusiasm she hopes will be contagious. "I adored writing it," Fonda tells Show Daily, adding that she wants people, women in particular, to be "much more hopeful" about aging.
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BEA 2011: Discussing the Power of Kids' Books at Breakfast
It was a packed house for Tuesday morning’s Children’s Book & Author Breakfast, with a host of literary celebrity sightings for the huge crowd of appreciative booksellers, beginning with Katherine Paterson, National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and two-time Newbery Medalist. Paterson set the tone for the more than 1,200 book people attending by talking about the power of books to influence the future course of young lives.
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BEA 2011: Abrams Celebrates Oprah
The Abrams booth at BEA features a number of forthcoming titles with proven track records and built-in audiences—including a new Good Eats book from bestseller Alton Brown, Harper's Bazaar's: Greatest Hits, and a new Wimpy Kid book—but none proven as popular as Oprah Winfrey, who chose Abrams to publish the official look back at her show, which ended its run Wednesday after 25 seasons. Though Winfrey was not on hand, Abrams beamed in the final episode at 4 p.m. on a 40-inch TV bought solely for the purpose, and toasted the daytime star’s swan song with champagne.
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BEA 2011: Speak Out Against Censorship, Industry Urged
Led by moderator Joan Bertin, executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship, three panelists provided an update during BEA on book banning in America, impressing upon their audience that assaults on the freedom of expression of writers and illustrators are as prevalent as they have ever been, if not more so.
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BEA 2011: E-book Future, Google, and Facts
Google, everyone's favorite 800-lb. gorilla, held a panel discussion on Tuesday and a presentation on Wednesday to parse the significance of the e-book explosion and to explain Google Books’ position in it.
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BEA 2011: Not Four of a Kind at Breakfast Panel
Wednesday’s breakfast was a terrific mashup of personalities, with four authors who strive for different audiences acknowledging one shared trait: a most serious love of reading.
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BEA 2011: BookStats Point Up
In a preliminary presentation for figures that will appear in July, representatives from the AAP, BISG, and Bowker explained the new process for how industry sales are being compiled and analyzed, at a Tuesday afternoon panel. The good news is that more than 1,100 publishers have supplied date to the joint AAP/BISG BookStats project, more than double the participation level of any other statistics endeavor. And in more good news, preliminary findings from the actual numbers show that sales, both in units and dollars, were up in the trade segment between 2008 and 2010.
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BEA 2011: Buzz Panel Hums
Speaking to a standing-room-only crowd at Monday's Buzz Panel, six editors made their pitches about the books they think, and hope, will edge out the competition this fall. While the offerings felt a little heavy on the women’s fiction side—Birds of Paradise, Running the Rift, The Underside of Joy, and The Night Circus all seem primed for that book club sweet spot—the editors proffered new and older writers as well as a mix of ballyhooed titles.
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BEA 2011: Teicher Calls for New Retail Business Models
American Booksellers Association CEO Oren Teicher broke with tradition at this year’s annual meeting. Rather than report on association activities during the past year, he addressed the elephant in the Javits Center, e-books and the turmoil that bricks-and-mortar booksellers are feeling. "As I hardly need to remind everyone here, these are not normal times in the book business. We are living through a period of unprecedented change and staggering challenges. It can no longer be business as usual," he said.
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BEA 2011: Audiobook of the Year to 'Life'
The Audio Publishers Association held its 16th annual Audies Gala on May 24 at New York's TimesCenter to celebrate the Audies winners of its yearly audiobook awards. The two biggest Audies this year went to musician-memoirist Keith Richards and genre-hopping poet-author Walter Dean Myers.
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BEA 2011: Hitting the Floor Running
While complaints abounded about air-conditioning and construction inside the Javits, book publishing professionals thought BEA was getting off to a promising start on Tuesday. Although a divide down the center of the main floor of the Javits Center had the effect of making the show look smaller and, at worst, obscuring the fact that the show is twice as big as it initially appears, many on the floor said that traffic was strong and a general excitement about e-books was buoying the mood.
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BEA Show Daily 2011: Channeling Helen Keller
Readers on the hunt for inspirational reads will want to check out Swedenborg Foundation Press's two big titles this season, Helen Keller's How I Would Help the World (Apr.) and Grant Schnarr's The Guardian Angel Diary (May).
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BEA Show Daily 2011: 40 Is the New 30 for IPG
To mark its 40th anniversary this year, Independent Publishers Group is doing what a lot of us do when we hit middle age and assess both where we've been and where we're headed: the book distribution company is giving itself a little makeover. IPG is rebranding itself by officially rolling out a new logo and revamping its Web site.
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BEA Show Daily 2011: Who's 40 Now?
Ziggy, the familiar, frumpy, and much-beloved everyman of comics is turning 40. And Andrews McMeel will be honoring the occasion with the June publication of Ziggy, a hardcover collection featuring selected panels spanning all four decades of the celebrated cartoon. "We are thrilled to be celebrating Ziggy's 40th anniversary," says Kirsty Melville, publisher and president of Andrews McMeel Publishing's book division. "A mainstay in popular culture, Ziggy has a secure spot in the hearts of millions of fans and has endeared himself to us for his optimistic outlook despite all odds, and for lending himself to a variety of charitable endeavors, including World Food Day, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and Autism Speaks."
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BEA Show Daily 2011: From Scrooge to Weddings
The busy schedule for Shadow Mountain Publishing this week highlights a list packed with everything from Scrooge to weddings.
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BEA Show Daily 2011: Life Is Like a Game of Poker
Bookselling is a lot like poker: it's all in the luck of the draw. Some seasons, publishers deal you a great hand, their books fly out the door, and you rake in the cash. Some seasons, you're stuck with books that just don't sell. And then there's the competition from chain stores, mass market retailers, and online retailers, all of them vying for that pot of book sales.
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BEA Show Daily 2011: Flowers for the First Ladies
Sellers Publishing hopes to get show attendees buzzing about Nancy Clarke's My First Ladies: Twenty-five Years as the White House Chief Floral Designer (Oct.).
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BEA Show Daily 2011: Warner's Walkabout
Looking for a hero? At BEA, Warner Bros. Consumer Products is focusing on some new additions to its family: the superheroes Green Lantern, Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. In March, Warner Bros. Consumer Products became the licensor for DC Entertainment's superheroes, which include those characters as well as DC Super-Pets.
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