TODAY'S NEWS

First Quarter Slip for Quarto
U.K.-based Quarto Group had a dip in sales and earnings in the first quarter ended March 31, with revenue down 5% to £19.8 million and operating income falling to £252,000 from £268,000. U.K. publishing sales were up slightly, international co-edition sales were down, though new orders are up. Business in the U.S. was negatively impacted by consolidating its warehouse and backoffice operations, and as CEO Laurence Orbach noted, the U.S. “remains pivotal to our performance.” While Orbach added that there are “no harbingers of spring in the air,” he said there were some signs of stability. At the recently concluded London Book Fair, Orbach observed, while “the froth has gone out of the market, underlying demand remains substantial.”

Sully’s Book Gets Title, Coauthor
Captain Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger, the pilot who succeesfully ditched his plane in the Hudson River and who will be one of the featured authors at BEA, has selected Jeffrey Zaslow, as his coauthor for his autobiography, which will be called Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters. Zaslow is the coauthor of the still bestselling The Last Lecture and is also the author of the just released The Girl from Ames. William Morrow will publishing Highest Duty December 1.

Amy Sedaris Back to Grand Central
Jamie Raab, executive v-p and publisher, Grand Central Publishing, has acquired U.S. rights for comedian and actress Amy Sedaris’ next book, due out in fall 2010. The as-yet-untitled book will continue the theme of her 2006 bestseller, I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence, and will, according to GCP, feature Sedaris’ “unique approach to home life through the use of fun, long-forgotten crafts.” The deal was negotiated with literary agent Tracy Fisher at the William Morris Agency.

Perseus Adds Partners to Constellation Program
Perseus Books Group has added four new vendor partners to its Constellation program, its suite of technology offerings for its distribution clients. The new partners are: eBooks.com for e-book sales to consumers; Follett Digital Services for e-book sales to libraries; Ingram Digital for e-book distribution and online marketing and their MyiLibrary® platform; and ReadHowYouWant for customized accessible formats. Speaking to the additional partners, David Steinberger, president and CEO of Perseus, said the move furthers the company's "quest to give independent publishers more revenue and more choices.” Read on »

L.A. Times Panel Debates Gatekeepers, Supply Chain and e-Books
By Wendy Werris
A standing room only audience heard five of today’s leading book industry analysts discuss the role of technology and the Internet on the future of a book industry in transition on April 25 at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.

The panel, moderated by the Times book editor David Ullin, included former PW editor-in-chief, publishing consultant and author of So Many Books, So Little Time Sara Nelson; Richard Nash, former head of Soft Skull Press; Otis Chandler, founder of the Goodreads Web site and Patrick Brown, Vroman’s Books’ webmaster and blogger engaging in a sometimes adversarial conversation about the profound changes that challenge the core of book publishing, how writers and readers connect, and how books are bought and sold. Read on »

Blogs

MORE STORIES

Chicago Review Press's Excellent Adventure
Even after finishing their terms, U.S. presidents remain well-insulated from their fellow Americans. Surrounded by secret service agents, they roam the world, engaged in lucrative speaking tours and hanging out with the world’s elite. But life after the White House wasn’t always like this, as Matthew Algeo writes in Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip due out from Chicago Review Press in May. Truman’s recounts how, less than six months after leaving the White House in 1953, Truman, accompanied only by his wife Bess, embarked in a Chrysler New Yorker on a 19-day, 2,500-mile road trip to the East Coast from Hannibal, Missouri, and back home again. All along the way, the couple ate at diners and stopped at motels, surprising the average citizens who came into contact with them. Read on »

Page to Screen: John Connolly's YA Novel & Giles Foden's Latest
This week in Page to Screen—PW's weekly column tracking film rights circulating and sold in Hollywood—Steve Fisher shops John Connolly's first YA novel and AP Watt goes out with a new one from the author of The Last King of Scotland.

Steve Fisher at APA has just started shopping film rights to John Connolly's first YA novel, The Gates. Emily Bestler at Atria bought the novel from Darley Anderson at the Darley Anderson Literary Agency in what Fisher called a "significant" deal; Fisher said the book was "an even hotter" title in the U.K. (Irishman Connolly is best known for his series of thrillers featuring ex-policeman Charlie Parker.) In The Gates, a group of novice satan worshippers accidentally turn a suburban home into a portal for demons. After the demonic slip-up the job of saving the world falls to a neighborhood boy, and his dog. The manuscript, according to some scouts, was generating buzz in London and Fisher confirmed he's been fielding interested calls from both studios and scouts. Read on »

Summer On-Sale Calendars
Among the novelists with books out this summer are John Sandford (May), Janet Evanovich and Carlos Ruiz Zafon (June), Nora Roberts (July) and Robin Cook, Pat Conroy and Faye Kellerman (Aug.). See what else is coming by checking our On-Sale Calendars for May, June, July and August.

The PW Morning Report
AAP Confirms Google Probe; Obama’s Book Club; American Poet Missing in Japan. Read on »

AUTHORS ON THE AIR

Authors on the Air: Freckleface Strawberry Returns; Happy Birthday, Willie Nelson!; The Brother Gardeners
This morning’s Today show hosted actress Julianne Moore, whose Freckleface Strawberry and the Dodgeball Bully (Bloomsbury Children's, 978-1599903163, $16.99) is the second in her series featuring a heroine with strawberry-red freckles and hair. Read on »

PICTURE OF THE DAY

Norwegian Lit…on Fifth Avenue
With the PEN Festival underway this week, Open Letter Press took the opportunity to toast one if its authors, Norwegian novelist Jan Kjærstad, at a luncheon yesterday hosted by the Norwegian Consulate. Kjærstad (r.), who read from his book The Conqueror, out in the U.S. this month, is pictured here with Open Letter’s E.J. VanLanen.
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JOB OF THE DAY

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