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The Music Didn’t Die: Focus on Music 2012
If this fall’s crop of music books is any indication, we’ve turned our radios on to listen closely for the lyrical as well as the tuneless attempts by artists, biographers, and historians to record the high notes, low notes, missing voices, and lost chords of music for a new generation.
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Dealing with Change: Spanish Publishers in the U.S. 2012
E-books, the recession, a decrease in immigration, and the closing of Borders have all affected the Spanish-language book industry, but this nimble sector has been able to adapt to the changing landscape. PW spoke with some of the publishers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers, and librarians who service this market to find out how they are managing the challenges and opportunities of the marketplace.
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Religion Update Fall 2012: Christian YA Fiction Coming into full bloom
Christian teen fiction is coming into its own these days as sales rise for both digital and traditional books, and as publishers look for the next bestselling series. While Christian publishers haven’t found juggernauts that compare to Harry Potter, the Hunger Games, the Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini, or the Twilight series, it’s not for lack of trying.
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Religion Update Fall 2012: Books on Marriage Keeping it Real—and Practical
Books on marriage from a religious point of view are heavily published by evangelical Christian houses, and this year their books on the subject keep clearly in focus the idea that a good marriage requires effort. New titles that promise everything from long-term strategies to quick fixes are all designed to improve and strengthen what for many people is the longest, most complex relationship of their lives.
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Religion Update Fall 2012: There’s a Parenting Book for That: Trying to stand out in a crowded category
Is your teen talking back? Is your toddler not yet talking? There’s a book for that.
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Indie Sleepers Titles to Watch: Indie Sleepers Fall 2012
From Akashic and McSweeney’s to the university presses of Chicago, Harvard, and Yale, independent and university presses make up an essential part of the inventory of all bookstores. For Paul Yamazaki, head buyer at City Lights in San Francisco, they create “the heart” of the bookstore. “Rexroth, Patchen, Adrienne Rich, Neruda, Walter Benjamin, and many other poets, novelists, historians, and philosophers would vanish from our shelves if indie and university presses were not represented well,” he says. And City Lights relies on these presses for more than 30% of its backlist sales, which represents a significant percentage of the store’s sales overall.
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The Lives of Wars: Military Books 2012
Unlike Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s old soldiers who “never die; they just fade away,” books on military history often refuse to disappear, retaining their popularity for decades or even hundreds of years.
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The ‘Fifty Shades’ Tail: How Long, And Far, Will It Stretch?
Those who thought interest in Fifty Shades of Grey would be a flash in the pan were, well, wrong. The trilogy has sold over 10 million copies in print alone. Industry insiders are now asking themselves where the Fifty Shades readers will turn next.
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Getting Healthy: Focus on Health 2012
Gone are the days when patients relied solely on information straight from the doctor’s mouth. The health-conscious face a multitude of would-be advisers online, from Google-derived self-diagnosis and treatment to WebMD’s frightening postings on exotic illnesses. Unwilling to be left out, book publishers, too, are joining the fray, with a cornucopia of rich offerings in the health category.
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Going Electronic
Cookbooks are quickly migrating into e-books—even the James Beard Foundation will open next year's awards to include digital cookbooks.
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Falling for Films of Fall: Movie Tie-ins Fall 2012
In addition to the diverse assortment of new releases and top-of-the-line stars, this season’s tie-ins might also represent the largest crop of classic movie revisions we’ve collected in some time—Anna Karenina, Wuthering Heights, Les Misérables (the musical!)—sprinkled with a liberal dose of contemporary star power. Among the noted authors represented are such classic and current names as Tolstoy, Emily Brontë, F. Scott Fitzgerald, David Mitchell, Lee Child, and Yann Martel. As usual, several new releases are dedicated to the younger set: this season’s movies run the gamut from a resurrected—pun intended—1984 Tim Burton short (Frankenweenie) to a new format for an old favorite (Finding Nemo 3D), and from the final bow for a big-screen juggernaut (Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2) to a pair of silver screen debuts (Rise of the Guardians and Wreck-It Ralph).
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Strength in Stitchery
The DIY trend kick-started by a younger generation forming Stitch ’n Bitch knitting circles in the early 2000s hardly seems like a trend any longer. A decade and change on, it’s simply a part of the culture. As a result, publishers have seen the craft category—which encompasses titles about sewing, knitting, crochet, jewelry making, and just about any other handmade art you can think of—grow to a stable level of healthy demand.
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Fiction Firsts for Fall: First Fiction 2012
PW looks at 10 particularly intriguing and promising debut novels. A strikingly varied assortment, these fictional works discuss artificial intelligence, the extinction of human life, and the Iraq War from two distinctly different viewpoints.
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Fall 2012 Audiobook Listings: The Sounds of Autumn
Early fall audiobooks are already winging their way to retailers (digitally and otherwise), as casting and recording of the remainder of the season’s titles is in full swing. In our latest listing, we turn a spotlight on some of this robust season’s most interesting offerings.
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Fall 2012 Religion Listings: No-brainers and Devout Wishes
Some things don’t change. A few fall titles seem destined for greatness in sales. Grace: More than We Deserve, Greater than We Imagine by Max Lucado has a lot of things going for it: Lucado’s track record of millions and millions of books sold, a quarter-million dollar launch budget, and a concept—grace—that is one of Christian theology’s kindest. Also likely for the winner’s circle is The Bridge by Karen Kingsbury. Readers consume her inspirational novels like cookies; this one has some bonus ingredients in the recipe: it’s Christmasy, though not extensively so, and it features a financially threatened independent bookstore.
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Literary Biographies, Essays, & Criticism - The Last Word
When it comes to an author’s legacy, who gets the last word? (Let’s forget for a moment the noble idea that the work speaks for itself.) Is it the author, the biographer, or the critic? Fall’s books offer fans and scholars a multitude of perspectives on the literary life.
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Science - The Sun, Energy, and Numbers, Oh, My
From exploring the universe to understanding the role of mathematics, science books range widely this fall. There are cataclysms both cosmic and Earth-bound; a scientist takes on a Bible story; sleep gets a close examination; and numbers are made to show off their exciting side.
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Sports - The Sporting News
Inevitably, sports books sell and get significant attention when they are driven by events—great contests, great scandals, or the kinds of personalities that are events in themselves. This fall, there are several titles that stand out as likely to benefit from combinations of those headline-grabbing factors.
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Poetry - Lives' Work
Poetry is bringing out some of its biggest guns for fall 2012, massive retrospective collections from some of the most famous poets—and some of them are actually famous, not just poetry-famous—writing in English. Along with being famous, many of this fall’s poets are important and breathtakingly good. There are a bunch of poetry books coming out that everyone who reads poetry will have to own.
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Introducing Our Fall 2012 Announcements
Here are our editors’ picks of the notable books of the season by category, 1,093 titles in all across the 19 categories, ranging from art, business, and cookbooks to fiction, memoir, lifestyle, poetry, sports, and travel. Our editors also selected their top 10 books in each category, which they introduce with essays. We hope that this selection gives booksellers, librarians, and media a good snapshot of what the fall season holds in store. It’s bound to be cooler...right?
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