TODAY'S NEWS

ICv2 Confab Reports 2007 Graphic Novel Sales Rise 12%
By Heidi MacDonald
With the New York Comic-Con about to start, the third annual ICv2 Graphic Novel Conference kicked off the show with its annual white paper on the category delivered by Milton Griepp, CEO of ICv2, a pop culture trade news Web site. The message was continued strong sales growth for the graphic novel category. In 2007 graphic novel sales in the U.S. and Canada were $375 million, a 12% rise from 2006 and quintuple the sales number from 2001.

Although this rapid and continuing growth has led the way to expanded graphic novel sections in bookstores and comics shops, Griepp cautioned that growth has slowed a bit, and the finite level of shelving space is beginning to be a factor. The number of titles in all genres continues to grow. In 2007 there were 3,391 graphic novels published. The number of manga titles (1,513) was up 25% and American genre comics, encompassing superheroes and other traditional genres (1,268), was up 31%. Fiction and reality–the "comics lit" or literary category–was up 2% (272) and kid's comics (145) were almost unchanged with a 1% increase. Humor rose 24% (83). Read on »

Publishing Veteran O’Hare to Launch Press
By Judith Rosen
Former Nicholas Brealey Publishing president and publisher Trish O’Hare, who has also held senior positions at Jossey-Bass and National Book Network, is starting her own press, GemmaMedia, which will release its first books this fall. Gemma will publish eight books a season through a combination of traditional frontlist publishing and print-on-demand, and Ingram Publishing Services will distribute to the trade.

“It’s a great time for small presses. Lots of people are self-publishing. But to my mind, there’s still a role for a publisher’s point of view,” said O’Hare, who sees Gemma as straddling the space between self-publishing and large houses. “I wanted to take advantage of the new technology and to have some flexibility in where I work. I saw opportunities and voices not being heard.” Read on »

Small Beer Offers Free Downloads of New Collection
By Judith Rosen
Large houses may have e-book widgets to replicate the experience of browsing a book, but Small Beer Press in Easthampton, Mass., is encouraging its authors to let potential book buyers download the entire book for free.

Through a licensing agreement with Creative Commons, Small Beer made John Kessel’s newly published collection of short stories, The Baum Plan for Financial Independence: and Other Stories, available in a variety of formats (low-res PDF, HTML, RTF and text file) earlier this week on its Web site. “We encourage any and all conversions into other formats,” says Small Beer cofounder Gavin Grant. “I see it as the equivalent of it being in a library.” The first day it was available, Small Beer had 1,000 downloads and, as of Thursday, 4,500 downloads, according to Grant. Read on »

Houston’s Domy Books Expands to Austin
By Edward Nawotka
Houston’s Domy Books, which celebrated its second anniversary on April 1, is opening a second location, in Austin, Tex., later this month. Located in a former convenience store on the corner of Cesar Chavez and Interstate 35, the new 1,800-sq.-ft. branch is nearly identical in size to the original location. Like its namesake, it will offer a selection of art books, graphic novels, magazines, literature and quirky sidelines.

The Houston location of Domy (which is Russian slang for “home”) was originally opened as an art gallery in 1992, and converted to a bookstore in 2006 when owner Dan Fergus realized that contemporary art translated much faster to books than it did to the gallery or museum world. “An artist can put out a monograph of their work very quickly, while it might take years or a lifetime to get a show in a given city,” he said. Read on »

The PW Morning Report
By Dermot McEvoy
Sorensen on JFK; Publishers Hot for Couric; I-Man and the P-Word; Kipling to PBS; Literary Obits; Beer to Big Screen; Octavio Paz Letters; Ian Fleming Exhibition; Everybody Hates Captain Kirk; and Muslim Fury Over Book? Read on »

Blogs

AUTHORS ON THE AIR

Authors on the Air: Pretty Is What Changes; In Nixon's Web; Dear First Lady
This morning on Live with Regis and Kelly, Katie Lee Joel talked about dipping into her archive of home cooked family recipes in The Comfort Table (Simon Spotlight Entertainment, $25). Read on »

PICTURE OF THE DAY

Supporting Graphic Novels and the First Amendment
On the eve of the opening the New York Comic-con, DC Comics president Paul Levitz (l.) and acclaimed comics writer and bestselling novelist Neil Gaiman (r.), hosted a reception to introduce the book industry to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit organization that provides legal advice and First Amendment support for comics and book retailers and publishers. Submit your pictures here »

JOB OF THE DAY

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