TODAY'S NEWS

B&N Sales Sink; Sees Gloomy Holiday
by Jim Milliot
The news was about as bad as it could be from Barnes & Noble. For the third quarter ended November 1, total sales fell 4.4%, to $1.1 billion, with sales through its bookstores down by the same 4.4%. Same store sales fell 7.4%. Sales at Barnes & Noble.com rose 2%, to $109 million. Moreover, the nation’s largest bookstore chain predicted that--based on the negative sales trend to date--same store sales in the fourth quarter will fall 6% to 9%. Earlie this month, B&N chairman Len Riggio warned employees in a memo that the company was bracing for a terrible holiday season. Read on »

Peter Matthiessen, Annette Gordon Reed Among National Book Award Winners
by Craig Morgan Teicher
The 2008 National Book Awards ceremony was held Wednesday night at Cipriani on Wall Street in downtown New York City. Cipriani was a new location for the awards. Host Eric Bogosian opened the ceremony by noting that Barack Obama’s win in the Presidential election is good news for many, including those attending the awards ceremony because he “is a reader and a writer.” Obama’s election was, in fact, a recurring theme among the evening speakers. Peter Matthiessen won in the fiction category for Shadow Country. "I had a hard time," he said in his acceptance speech, "persuading people that fiction was my natural thing, not nonfiction." Alexander Hemon’s The Lazarus Project and Marilynne Robinson’s Home were front-runners. Salvatore Scibona’s The End, a debut novel published by independent publisher Graywolf Press, was also nominated. Gail Godwin presented the award. Read on »

St. Martin's Hopes for Daschle Rush
By Rachel Deahl
St. Martin's could be the next publisher to owe thanks to the president-elect. Since the announcement yesterday that Tom Daschle has been named to Barack Obama's cabinet as Secretary of Health and Human Services, St. Martin's/Thomas Dunne is seeing renewed interest in Critical, its February 2008 book by the former Democratic Senate leader. The book, subtitled What We Can Do About the Health Care Crisis, couldn't be more topical, said John Murphy, St. Martin's v-p, director of publicity, who told PW that the title "completely outlines [Daschle's] and, dare I say, the president-elect's, thoughts on our healthcare system." Although Thomas Dunne director of publicity Joseph Rinaldi said the decision about going back to press on the title is still to come, he confirmed that interview requests for the author have already started flooding in, as have large reorders from national accounts. According to Rinaldi, St. Martin's has "several thousand" copies of the book in stock from the original printing, which he estimated at "well over 20,000." Read on »

Olsson's Staffers Launch New Venture

Two former staffers from Olsson's, Alicia Greene and Terence K. McCann, have launched a new business called Offsite Books Inc., which will sell books at various events. Greene, who was the marketing director and events coordinator at Olsson's, the Washington, D.C., indie bookstore that closed this past fall, and McCann, Olsson's former CFO, intend to set up bookselling operations at local venues, like nonprofits and law firms, as well as at private parties. The company intends, as Greene said in a memo, "to be a key player in the always-active Washington, D.C., events scene." Greene added that one of the areas Olsson's thrived in was offsite events, and there is "unmet demand" for this kind of service in the D.C. area. Already Offsite Books has run events for Kerrey Kennedy and Newt Gingrich; the company can be found online at www.offsitebooks.com. Read on »

Penguin Group and Author Hosseini Build School in Afghanistan
by Craig Morgan Teicher
Penguin Group (USA)—in partnership with the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and author Khaled Hosseini—announced today the opening of a newly built school for children in grades one through six in Arababshirali, which is about 150 miles from Kabul in Afghanistan. The school serves 270 local children. The project was inspired by Hosseini, bestselling author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, who, in 2006 was named a U.S. envoy to the UNHCR. Penguin made a donation as “a tribute to American booksellers, librarians and educators who supported Khaled Hosseini’s #1 New York Times–bestselling and internationally acclaimed novels, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns.” Read on »

Blogs

MORE STORIES

Page to Screen: Werewolves of Cincinnati & Van Gogh's Girl
Brendan Deneen, at Objective Entertainment, is shopping film rights to Bestial, a debut novel by William D. Carl published by Permuted Press in June. The book, set in a post-apocalyptic Cincinnati, Ohio, follows four strangers--a thief, a bank teller, a housewife and a runaway--who are the sole survivors of a catastrophic event that turns everyone else in the city into flesh-eating monsters. Deneen, who's pitching to studios as well as production companies, says it's "28 Days Later with werewolves." Jessica Regel at Jean V. Naggar is shopping film rights to the debut novel by art historian Sheramy Bundrick, Sunflowers. The book, which Avon bought over the summer and plans to drop in fall 2009, ruminates on the recipient of Van Gogh’s ear; after the artist infamously snipped it off while living in the French town of Arles, he gave it to a local prostitute named Rachel. (In Bundrick’s novel, Rachel falls for the mad painter.) Barbara Braun sold the lit rights and Regel is handling subsidiary rights as well as film; Regel is pitching the book as fodder for something "in the tradition of Girl with a Pearl Earring and Frida." Read on »

The PW Morning Report, November 20, 2008
Clive Barnes Dead; Catching-22 From Erica Heller; Serge Bramly Wins Prix Interallié; Ina Garten Profile; and John Kenneth Galbraith Remembers 1929 Read on »

AUTHORS ON THE AIR

Authors on the Air: Kenneth Cole; Jim Norton; Glenn Beck
Today on Good Morning America, designer Kenneth Cole raised Awearness: Inspiring Stories About Making A Difference (DK, 978-1595910462, $25). After the jump: Thomas Friedman talks with Stephen Colbert; Richard Belzer visits Jon Stewart and Howard Stern; and Jim Norton rants to Chelsea Handler and Adam Corolla Read on »

PICTURE OF THE DAY

NBA Winners
At the National Book Awards last night, the 2008 winners posed for the camera. Pictured here (l. to r.) are: Mark Doty (poetry, Fire to Fire); Annette Gordon-Reed (nonfiction, The Hemingses of Monticello); Judy Blundell (young people’s literature, What I Saw and How I Lied); and Peter Matthiesen (fiction, Shadow Country). Photo credit: Nancy Crampton Read on »

JOB OF THE DAY

PW VIRTUAL EDITION