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Seeking Health and Happiness: Self-Help 2011
If the 1967 self-help classic I’m OK, You’re OK were being published today, the title might have a third phrase added to it: I’m OK, You’re OK, but the Economy Is Not. The recession is having a strong impact on the self-help category these days, say publishers, but not necessarily in the ways one might assume.
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Runs, Hits, and P&Ls
I went to see the film adaptation of Moneyball last week with my wife. It’s the perfect date movie: Men can geek out on the baseball ambiance and the stats while the women can gaze on the magnificence that is Brad Pitt. One scene in particular, though, really struck home with me.
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Never Out of Fashion
For the moment, text and photography, gliding smoothly with their practiced grace, are going strong in the illustrated book category. And several of the more high-end art book publishers are keenly aware that production values and the right subject can make for success.
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Gifted in Sports: Sports Books 2011
In America, fall ’tis the season for sports—baseball playoffs and the World Series, weekends packed with college football and the NFL, hockey getting under way, and basketball, too, if labor issues are worked out. The intensity keeps up till February, when your average fan takes a break till the NCAA basketball tournament and the return of baseball. Publishing-wise, of course, the gift-giving season, roughly Thanksgiving through Christmas, makes this all an opportunity for publishers and booksellers to offer ideal items for the millions of sports-crazy citizens. And this season has a stocked lineup.
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Age-Old Secrets
When Simon and Schuster’s Atria division published The Secret in 2006, it would have been impossible to predict the phenomenon Rhonda Byrne’s book would become. Even visualizing a blockbuster, the expectations would probably have been a bit more modest than more than 20 million copies sold worldwide five years later. Soon—likely by December or January, predicts Atria publisher Judith Curr—The Secret will mark its 200th week on the New York Times bestseller list.
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Paws & Effect: Pets & Animals 2011
A classic Gary Larson cartoon presents this scenario: Under the caption “What We Say to Dogs,” a man points his finger at a pooch and announces, “Okay, Ginger! I’ve had it! You stay out of the garbage! Understand, Ginger? Stay out of the garbage, or else!” The lower half of the cartoon has the identical drawing, but the caption is “What They Hear,” and the man’s dialogue bubble simply reads, “blah blah GINGER blah blah blah blah blah blah GINGER blah blah blah blah...”
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The Fat Fantastic
Readers of fantastic fiction are no strangers to things titanic and awesome. Of late, though, these attributes have come to characterize the physical dimensions of the books, as much as the subjects of their stories: over the last few years, several retrospective anthologies of horror and fantasy fiction have appeared in volumes of considerable length.
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Ghosts: The Other Undead
At a time when it would be hard to swing even Schrodinger’s cat in a bookstore’s horror section without knocking a score of zombie and vampire books from its shelves, several authors have chosen ghosts as the medium for exploring truths about human nature.
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Life Riffs: Focus on Music 2011
Roger Daltrey of the Who sang, “I hope I die before I get old,” but these days his peers are settling into their golden years with apparent contentment. The rockers are even calling attention to their advancing ages by penning memoirs recalling their glory days.
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Fall for Film: Movie Tie-Ins Fall 2011
Clooney, and Muppets, and Rum, oh my! While there's always something for everyone at the movies, the coming four months appear to hold even more "something"—celebrated swashbucklers buckle anew; Shakespeare's canon is again called into question (Francis Bacon, anyone?); we spy a classic espionage novel; a Tony-Award winning play hits the screen; Jung and Freud compare notes.
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Top 20 Indies: Indie Sleepers Fall 2011
Despite many stores cutting back on hardcover fiction as e-books continue to erode print sales, booksellers have high expectations for the fall. “This season I’m very optimistic that there are a lot of books people will want to own,” says Jason Kennedy, a bookseller/buyer at Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee. He’s not alone.
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Beyond That Lady Detective: African Crime Fiction
For most readers, African crime fiction begins and ends with Alexander McCall Smith. His wonderful, internationally bestselling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, which debuted in the U.S. in 1998, presents localized if significant problems of daily living that Precious Ramotswe, the agency’s founder and main detective, sorts out with infinite patience and compassion for human foibles.
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From the Front Lines: Military Books 2011
In 1961, Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell address as president coined a term that reverberates still: the former Supreme Allied Commander Europe warned against granting the "military-industrial complex" too influential a position in the U.S. In the intervening 50 years, in addition to taking center stage in the economy and in politics, that military-industrial complex has also stepped into the cultural spotlight. The act, the planning, the execution, the aftermath of war in general—not any particular conflict—now constitute a key subject in our national dialogue.
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An Agent's Healthy Talk: PW Talks with Yfat Reiss Gendell
Reiss Gendell now represents some major names in the health arena, including Pierre Dukan, whose The Dukan Diet marks week 16 on PW's list, and Tosca Reno, a bestseller-list veteran with nearly a million copies sold of titles like Your Best Body Now. PW caught up with Reiss Gendell to ask about the market for health books.
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Rx for Wellness: Focus on Health 2011
Traditional medicine has always been the mainstay of the health category. And its books reflected that by tending toward a "just the facts" approach that advocated conservative treatment options, all wrapped up in a staid package. But as the medical establishment has begun to embrace a more holistic view, titles dealing with everything from overall health to conditions like diabetes, autism, and cancer are reflecting the change in attitude, say publishers.
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Recipes for Success
Some days, it seems as if the Internet is going to kill off cookbooks. With Web sites from Epicurious (www.epicurious.com) to Chow (www.chow.com) serving up recipes for free, who needs to shell out for a book? "The vast database of recipes online pushes us all to be more creative and more relevant," says Hannah Rahill, v-p and publisher, at Weldon Owen.
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Crafting The Future: Weaving Print and Digital
Most ads for e-readers still feature a picture of a device showing black-and-white text in neat lines on a small screen. And basic text was what the earlier devices handled best (and, arguably, still do). With lush photo spreads and need to include patterns and illustrations, it's no surprise that publishers of craft titles were not the first out of the gate to embrace digital formats.
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Fall 2011 Religion Listings: Religion's Remedies: Humor, Silence
Penn Gillette's forthcoming atheist screed, GOD, NO! Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales, may be a late entry in the does-He-or doesn't-He-exist debate, but it's sure to be freshly funny. Playing counterpoint to the magician-comedian is an author who's entertaining enough to have earned a trip to The Colbert Report.
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Fall 2011 Announcements: Sports: Villains, Heroes, Hunter
Competitive sports triggers many complex emotions—joy mixed with tears, suffering stirred to violence. In the same week in June, hockey fans set fire to cars in the Vancouver streets two nights after a nation of basketball fans in the U.S were introduced to the word "schadenfreude" in the NBA finals, when the Mavs beat the Heat.
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Fall 2011 Announcements: Social Science: Young Americans
As the 2012 presidential campaign begins, it's clear that, for all the talk about fiscal issues, the so-called "culture wars" will figure prominently in selecting who will run—and how they will run—against Barack Obama next November. This season's social science books examine deeply topics of conversation that will soon be bandied about loosely on talk radio, cutting to the core of who we are as Americans, with an especially strong focus on generational issues.
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