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Fall 2012 Announcements: Comics and Graphic Novels: Good Yarns
Why is a story about the sea always called a yarn? This season’s best graphic novels not only include two set on the water but a number of great yarns, some outright science fiction, that present the kind of larger than life stories comics are often known for.
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Small Towns, Big Sales: Focus on Romance 2012
Even as shelf space contracts in bricks-and-mortar retailers, publishers still believe in a happily-ever-after for the contemporary romance genre—and one that extends to signing new authors, particularly in the digital space.
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Yes, Virgil, There Are Men Writing Romance: Focus on Romance 2012
While female authors still greatly outnumber their male counterparts in the romance category, more men are writing love stories, though not always under their own names.
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Country Crime: Six Regional Mystery Authors
As in all genres, the mystery category enjoys trends or fads that capture readers’ attention and garner critical acclaim for a few months or a few years. Think of the ongoing influx of Scandinavian mysteries or the continuing fascination with serial killers or even spillover from Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series resulting in an upsurge of vampire mysteries. Sometimes these trends unfairly obscure the strong body of work represented in less flashy if just as substantial subgenres—in particular, regional mysteries.
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Paging the Future: Focus on Reference 2012
The Encyclopedia Britannica is now strictly digital? The thought left many stunned booklovers feeling that the prospects for looking up information were not... well, looking up. It was like learning your grandmother had gotten a tattoo and run off with a younger man.
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Fall 2012 Announcement Listings Registration
This page contains instructions and registration access for PW's fall 2012 announcement listings. Publishers wishing to submit their titles through Edelweiss should begin here.
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Summertime Showtime: Movie Tie-Ins Spring 2012
Made in America—mostly. Sure, Hollywood’s still pulling the strings, but a lot of the season’s flicks are either set in foreign locales (India, Sweden, Scotland, outer space), and/or filmed beyond Tinseltown (Louisiana, Paris, Russia).
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Breaking Out
Coming up on June 4, the Lambda Literary Awards marks the 24th year that the Lambda Literary Foundation has passed out accolades for achievement in LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) writing. The 119 finalists in 24 categories on the slate for the 2011 “Lammys” were selected from a record number of titles that exceeded 600 books (compared to last year’s record 520), which were published by 250 presses, up from 230 last year.
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The New (Para) Normal
Want to tackle a challenge? Then try to develop a universally accepted definition of the boundaries of paranormal fiction. Or even a planetary one. There’s just nothing even remotely resembling a consensus, even among some of the top authors with works included in the genre.
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The Truth Is in the Crime
“The human heart being what it is,” Truman Capote told George Plimpton in 1966 when discussing In Cold Blood, the story of a Kansas family’s murder that would become a landmark of the true crime genre, “murder was a theme not likely to darken and yellow with time.”
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Objets d’Art: Art & Photography Books 2012
The world of art and photography books is one of lushly illustrated and exciting titles, many of which are expensive, too. PW recently asked buyers at five bookstores specializing in art and photography titles to comment on the latest trends in this category and their predictions for the future.
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Lower Unit Sales, Fewer Titles
For both fiction and nonfiction hardcover titles, name-brand recognition is the key to bestseller success. While that is not new, the 2011 annual chart had fewer than usual new players. In fiction, there were two novelists debuting in the top 30. George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, with five titles, was perhaps the most successful franchise last year. [NOTE: this is a corrected version of the story that ran on 3/19/12].
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E-books Boom: E-books: Facts and Figures 2012
Last year was the first time PW gathered annual sales on e-books. Criteria were at least 10,000 copies or more sold during 2010’s 12 months and the publishers polled were the ones that also had print bestsellers. Not all publishers responded, and many submitted selected titles. Nevertheless, the annual list included about 275 titles, an impressive figure. With reports of e-book sales going through the roof last year, we wisely set 25,000 or more for this year’s cutoff point. The 2011 total for 25,000+ is even more impressive—340 titles; only 100 books on the 2010 list hit that mark. Unit sales for the e-books bestsellers also exploded. In 2010, five e-books had sales of 200,000 or more units; in 2011, a whopping 35 titles had sales of more than 200,000. Once again, there were publishers who did not want to share their e-book data while others shared selected titles.
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Less Is Just Less
Back in PW’s bestseller report of 2002, there were an astounding number of mass market bestsellers with sales over the million-copy mark. A total of eight books boasted sales of two million and more; an additional 39 claimed more than one million. That’s a dramatic contrast to the total of six million+ players noted in our 2012 report. Two current million-copy authors, John Grisham and Nora Roberts, were among the 2002 two million+, and Roberts had three on that list. The newcomer to the 2011 million-copy club is George R.R. Martin, with four books totaling more than 5.5-million copies.
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Hardcover Fiction and Nonfiction: Facts and Figures 2012
Hardcover Fiction Sales, 2011
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Lower Unit Sales, Fewer Titles
Please click here for the updated version of this article.
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Faith in Sports
It’s become a familiar sight: athletes dropping to their knees in prayer in the end zone or thanking God in their post-game press conferences. And books by and about sports stars who are vocal Christians have become an important part of many publishers’ lists.
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Publishers Catch the Linsanity
Jeremy Lin's rapid rise to fame is being matched step-for-step by publishers, who are featuring the instant star with a slew of instant print and e-books, focusing on everything from Lin's faith to his motivational tactics. And that's not to mention the number of unlicensed e-biographies that showed up just days after Lin started making waves on February 4, the night before the Super Bowl, in a game against the Nets.
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Playing the Game
Last fall, Tim Tebow, the Denver Broncos quarterback, went on an impressive run—dare I say a miraculous one? (Others did, at the time.) Getting his first start in the sixth game of the season (Denver was 1–4), he led the Broncos to a division title and an astounding win in the playoffs against the Steelers before being knocked out by New England the next week.
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