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'The Hypnotist,' Hot LBF Title, Tops in Sweden
Not too much new fiction made it to the top of the lists in the major European markets in August, but there was a new bestseller in Sweden, with The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler landing at #1. The novel was one of the hot books at the London Book Fair and was bought for the U.S. after the fair closed by Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
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Penguin Classics Headed to Brazil
Thanks to an exclusive agreement with 23-year-old Brazilian publisher Companhia das Letras, Penguin Classics will begin publishing in Brazil. The initial list of titles will drop next year.
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Frankfurt Book Fair: Frankfurt Survey Examines New Business Models
The Frankfurt Book Fair is conducting a survey of what the world’s publishers believe will be the business models of the future.
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RH Canada, McClelland & Stewart Outsourcing Rights Work, Laying Off Staff
In a cost-cutting move from two of Canada's biggest publishers, Random House Canada and McClelland & Stewart are outsourcing their subsidiary rights work to a newly formed offshoot of the Cooke Agency called the Cooke Agency International. As a result of the move, three staffers at RH Canada and two at M&S were laid off.
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Russia Will Be Market Focus at 2011 London Book Fair
Russia will be the market focus and guest of honor at the 2011 London Book Fair. The decision was based on Russian publishing’s rapid growth in the past two decades and on the success of the Russian Pavilion and Russian Literature Week, which were held in conjunction with LBF 2009.
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U.K. Publishers Protest Bologna Curtailment
Representatives from more than 30 publishers, literary agencies and other firms in the U.K. have signed a petition protesting against the shortening of the Bologna Children's Book Fair. Sarah Pakenham of Andersen Press and Margot Edwards of Piccadilly Press organized the petition in dismay both at the reduction of the fair from four days to three and at a failure to introduce a corresponding reduction in fees.
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Frankfurt Book Fair: Random House Cancels Frankfurt Party
In a sign of the economic times, Random House has canceled its famed curtain-raising soiree during the Frankfrut Book Fair.
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Found in Translation
This fall, three iconic 20th-century novels are being released in new translations, and their publishers have good reasons to boast. Never before have these novels, written by oppressed German, Russian and Polish writers, been more accessible to American readers. With technology making the world smaller daily, there's still something to be said for a fresh new translation's ability to promote g...
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"PW,’ BookBrunch Team for Frankfurt Coverage
Publishers Weekly is teaming up with BookBrunch, the London-based online daily newsletter and website, to produce two issues of the Frankfurt Fair Dealer at the Frankfurt Book Fair this fall. The first issue will appear Wednesday, October 14 and the second Friday October 16.
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Nonprofit Archipelago Books Needs Help
Forced to reduce staff and delay books because of the distressed economy, Brooklyn-based Archipelago Books, a small prize-winning nonprofit press specializing in literary translations, is reaching out to its supporters and the general reading public for donations to help it survive.
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Volcano Stories: A PW Web-Exclusive Profile of Yrsa Sigurdardottir
Internationally bestselling Icelandic crime writer Yrsa Sigurdardottir on lame crime, being in Amazon.com's psycho database and shaking up the Scandinavian crime novel boys club.
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Messe Frankfurt and Frankfurt Book Fair Renew Contract
Frankfurt’s mayor, along with Michael von Zitzewitz of the Frankfurt exhibition grounds, fair director Juergen Boos, and director of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association Prof. Dr. Gottfried Honnefelder jointly announced that the fair will remain in Frankfurt to 2022.
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NEA Selects Copper Canyon to Publish Chinese Anthology
The National Endowment for the Arts has chosen Copper Canyon Press to be the U.S. publisher for its International Literary Exchange with China. The exchanges are designed to help American houses publish and promote contemporary anthologies in translation. Copper Canyon will receive $117,000 to support the translation, publication and promotion of a bilingual anthology of work by about 35 Chinese poets born after 1945.
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London Book Fair Restaurant Report
I guess if I can get a string of sunny days in London (seriously: I did not open my umbrella once), I can eat six days’ worth of terrific meals without much guidance, too. Here's a look at the pubs, foodie spots, and classic Indian restaurants where I ate while covering LBF 2009.
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London Book Fair '09: Quieter But Productive
For a fair that was predicted to be quieter than years past, the London Book Fair was busy by many accounts. Talk revolved around the economy, although many American publishers were quick to cite the declining exchange rate of the British pound, which made London somewhat more affordable this year (the pound is down some 27% over last year).
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'The Hypnotist' Becomes One of the Fair's Big Books
While London saw a number of big book deals, one of the biggest involved the thriller, The Hypnotist. The title, which has yet to sell in the U.S., was at the center of a heated auction in the U.K. involving some of the country's leading crime publishers.
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A Quieter But Productive London Book Fair
For a fair that was predicted by many to be quieter than years past, the London Book Fair has been busy by many accounts. “Overall attendance may not be that great, but the quality of the attendance has been phenomenal,” said Frank Daniels, chief commercial officer of Ingram Digital. “People are very focused,” he told PW, and those who did show up “came to do business.”
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Willen Accepts Lifetime Achievement Award
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt senior editor Drenka Willen was in London to accept the sixth annual lifetime achievement award for international publishing.
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British Publishers Try to Find the Money in E-books
A standing room only crowd jammed into the Cromwell Room at Earls Court mid-morning on day two of the London Book Fair, hoping to learn the answer to what moderator Torin Douglas called “the $64,000 question: where’s the money” in e-books?
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Penguin Breakfast Explains Company's Global Outlook
At Penguin UK’s headquarters at 80 Strand this morning, chairman and CEO John Makinson presented a group of journalists with an overview of the company’s global business, offering commentary and observations from five of its international divisions. The big picture: Penguin is reaching far and wide, especially into developing countries.