TODAY'S NEWS

Harcourt San Diego Office to Close
by Jim Milliot
Employees in Harcourt's San Diego trade division were told Thursday that the office will close June 30. The announcement is the latest step in the integration of the Harcourt and Houghton Mifflin trade operations into the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade & Reference Publishers division. The San Diego office has about 65 employees. Few details about the closing were available Thursday evening, although HMH is believed to be offering the chance for some San Diego employees to relocate to company offices in Boston and New York.

The decision to close the San Diego office was not a surprise. Since the consolidation of the Harcourt and HM trade units began, HMH has said that two of Harcourt's top executives—president Dan Farley and children’s group publisher Lori Benton—will leave the company at the end of January. Farley lost the top spot at HMH Trade to Gary Gentel and on Wednesday HM's Betsy Groban was named head of the combined children's group.

Borders Holiday Sales Rise, But Earnings Disappoint
by Jim Milliot
Borders Group reported that total sales for the nine week holiday period ended January 5 rose 3.9%, to $1.1 billion, but like Barnes & Noble, the number 2 bookstore chain said earnings will not meet expectations. In a statement, Borders CEO George Jones said that the "overall shopping environment was intensely promotional and impacted the bottom line more than we anticipated." As a result, Borders said fourth quarter operating earnings will be flat to down slightly compared to one year ago. Read on »

BAM Posts 5.3% Holiday Gain
Books-A-Million was the last of the chains to report holiday sales and had the largest gain with sales up 5.3%, to $130.8 million. Comp store sales were flat. President Sandy Cochran said that despite softening economic conditions BAM saw good results in several book categories as well as a strong increase in bargain books. For the first 11 months of the year, sales were up 5.1%, to $494.2 million, and comp sales rose 2.0%.

Ditlow Joins Brilliance
By Shannon Maughan
Tim Ditlow, former publisher of Listening Library and publisher at large for Random House Audio (see our story in Children's Bookshelf), has joined Grand Haven, Mich.-based Brilliance Audio, effective immediately. Ditlow is charged with the company's further expansion into the children's audio market, according to Brilliance president and publisher Michael Snodgrass. "Tim will be an acquisitions editor, a role which falls within our editorial department, but he'll also be doing much more than that," Snodgrass said. "We are still working out the details of what his title will be." He will report directly to Snodgrass.

Ditlow will be "actively pursuing children’s audio projects," Snodgrass added, and "will be setting up operations in a Brilliance office in New York." In the meantime, Ditlow can be reached through Brilliance's offices in Michigan. Read on »

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MORE STORIES

Tina Brown to Write 'The Clinton Chronicles' for Doubleday
By Bridget Kinsella
Doubleday announced that Tina Brown will take on the Bill and Hillary Clinton era in The Clinton Chronicles to be edited by Phyllis Grann and published in 2010.

Grann acquired U.S. rights from Ed Victor for an undisclosed amount. Grann reportedly paid $2 million for Brown's The Diana Chronicles published last summer and which had hit both the PW and New York Times bestsellers lists, prompting speculation that the Clinton deal could be considerably larger. Brown edited the New Yorker for most of the Clinton administration, giving her a unique perspection of the Clinton years.

"The publication of The Diana Chronicles confirmed that Tina is an enormously gifted author as well as a masterful editor," said Grann. "Her portrait of the Clintons will undoubtedly be every bit as unique, insightful and immensely readable as her critically acclaimed biography of the Princess of Wales." The Diana Chronicles has 300,000 copies in print.

New Rushdie Set for June
By Bridget Kinsella
In what Will Murphy, Salman Rushdie's editor at Random House, called a "bold departure" in setting and subject for the author, the next Rushdie novel The Enchantress of Florence will be published June 3. The book is the third novel published under the 1999 deal Ann Godoff (now at Penguin) made with Andrew Wylie for Random to publish four Rushdie novels and a collection of essays.

Florence is a historical novel based on seven years of research set in Renaissance Florence and the court of the Mughal Empire. Random House says the book mixes political intrigue and high drama, romance and magic and reflects on the dangers of intertwined fantasy and reality. Read on »

New Kingston Memoir from Knopf
By Matthew Thornton
Maxine Hong Kingston has signed with her longtime publisher Knopf to write a memoir on the occasion of turning 65; Deborah Garrison bought North American rights from Sandra Dijkstra. I Love a Broad Margin to my Life will reflect on growing older, taking Kingston back to China where she'll reconnect with her classic first book, The Woman Warrior, and revealing a deeply personal glimpse of six "villages" that most influenced her life and writing.

Kingston, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, is the author of numerous books. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, published by Knopf in 1975, won the National Book Critics Circle Award; the book explores the female, Chinese-American experience. The followup to that book, China Men, won the National Book Award in 1981. This new memoir is tentatively scheduled for publication in 2010.

Monday’s Reviews Today: More 'Spellmans' & Andrews' 'Home'
In Curse of the Spellmans, Lisa Lutz's follow-up to her 2007 debut, The Spellman Files, local San Francisco PI Isabel Spellman, who works for her family's detective agency, returns with charming results. As our reviewer notes: "Fans of The Spellman Files will laugh just as loudly at the comic antics chronicled in this sparkling sequel." And in the new memoir from Julie Andrews, Home, the actress-turned-bestselling-children's-author delivers an account of her formative years and early career that "readers will rejoice" over. Read on »

AUTHORS ON THE AIR

Authors on the Air: Eat This Not That; Something About the Blues; The Madness of Mary Lincoln
This morning, the Today show interviewed bestseller and Men's Health editor-in-chief Dave Zinczenko, author of Eat This Not That: Thousands of Simple Food Swaps That Can Save You 10, 20, 30 Pounds-or More! (Rodale, $19.95). Read on »

PICTURE OF THE DAY

Cohen Stays 'Strong' In NYC
A number of New York media folk came out this week to celebrate the release of author Richard Cohen’s new book Strong at the Broken Places: Voices of Illness, A Chorus of Hope (Harper). Pictured here at the launch party for the book are (top row): Al Roker; Larry Fricks (profiled in the book); Jane Friedman; Meredith Vieira; Cohen; and Buzz Bay (profiled in the book). Bottom row: Ann Curry; Ben Cumbo (profiled in the book); and Sarah Levin Weiss (profiled in the book). Submit your pictures here »

JOB OF THE DAY

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