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Spring 2012 Announcements: Lifestyle: The Next Trick; Down Dog; Up with Cats
The heaviest hitter on the lifestyle shelf this spring is not a diet book but the newest offering from mega-successful author and filmmaker Rhonda Byrne. With an announced printing of 750,000, The Magic (Atria, Mar.) is positioned to prestidigitate onto bestseller lists, following the trajectory of Byrne’s previous book phenoms, The Secret (2006, with 20 million in print) and The Power (2010).
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Spring 2012 Announcements: Cookbooks: Back to the Land… Again
There is nothing simpler and tastier than a juicy, vine-picked tomato sprinkled with salt and drizzled with olive oil, or a freshly caught mackerel stuffed with bay leaves, and grilled on an open fire. Food that is simple and natural is part of a continuing trend of going locavore, growing, cultivating and eating from one’s own garden or farm. And this continues in this spring’s cookbooks.
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Spring 2012 Announcements: Dark Days: Literary Fiction
The election is still nine months away, but already our airwaves are clogged with power-mad men in power ties lying through their straight white teeth. The unemployment rate is falling, they say; the economy is in recovery. There is hope, they tell us. Everyone’s favorite dream is still alive and well. Over the next six months, if we’re going to get anything remotely resembling truth, we have to turn to fiction.
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Spring 2012 Announcements: Business: Global Reach
Globalization was supposed to bring economic benefits to people all over the world; while it brought improvements to some regions it has caused as nearly many challenges. The impact of a more interconnected world is the focus of many of the most important business books being published this spring.
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Spring 2012 Announcements: Art: Masters, Design, Sustainability & Architecture
In art book publishing, there is an increasing confluence of disciplines—visual arts becomes urban design becomes social critique and eventually lands as cultural history. This season’s listing are replete with books on green architecture, sustainable design, and voices of dissent, and plenty of major artists. Hard to chose 10 titles among the diversity of offerings, so I will opt for reflecting that diversity.
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Spring 2012 Announcements: Poetry: Mid-Career Triumphs
This spring, lots of very strong poets are bringing out new volumes of poetry—it’s not the usual stampede of “selecteds” and “collecteds” by poets at the end of their careers or past the end of their lives—though there are a few of those. But the books that stand out in the next few months are the slim volumes of new poems by poets in the middle of their careers: third, fourth, and fifth books by poets we’ve been watching for a few years now.
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Fewer Books on Religion and Politics, but Broader Views
In a move that reflects both shifting political dynamics and market forces, Thomas Nelson has slashed its politics program, from as many as 20 new titles per year in the early 2000s to just five in 2012. The books now target not only Christian conservatives but also moderates and liberals through such offerings as a new, evenhanded edition of The Faith of Barack Obama (Nov.), first released in 2008.
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Equal Opportunity Electioneering
With the primary season underway, the approaching presidential election is becoming inescapable. Already the news networks are switching into serious campaign-coverage mode, with plenty of color-coded maps, raucous commentary, and game-changing polls on the way. Publishers are also preparing for the big political season—with a host of timely titles for what’s sure to be a heated election cycle.
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Staying Afloat in Rough Waters: Personal Finance 2011
The statistics are grim: more than 50% of mortgages in the U.S. are underwater. Unemployment stands at 8.6%, the lowest figure since spring 2009, while outstanding student loan debt will exceed $1 trillion this year, outpacing credit card debt, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the U.S. Department of Education.
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Partnership Models and the African-American Book Market
Unconventional business partnerships that create imprints to publish books for the African-American market are generating a wave of opportunities for authors, publishers, and entrepreneurs alike. Not all of the ventures covered here are new—Strebor Books was founded in 1999—but they do offer examples of innovative and successful departures from conventional publishing models.
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African-American Interest Adult Titles, 2011-2012
The following is a list of African-American interest books for adult readers; compiled from publisher responses to our October PW Call for Information, these titles are publishing between September 2011 and March 2012.
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Weighing the Options: Deit and Fitness 2011
With Thanksgiving past and the holiday feasting season underway, there’s one category guaranteed to attract repentant readers come the inevitable parade of New Year’s resolutions: diet and fitness.
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Don’t Miss Our Spring Announcements Deadline!
Title collection procedure for PW’s spring adult and children’s announcements—the Jan. 23 and Feb. 20 issues, respectively, is under way.
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Romancing the Reader: Focus on Romance 2011
Over the past few years, authors have felt increasing pressure to promote their works and brands online. This is especially true in the romance world, where wired readers have been quick to adopt e-books, and book discussion blogs have sprung up like wildflowers.
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Spring Time: Call for Spring Announcements
Title collection procedure for PW's spring adult and children's announcements—the Jan. 23 and Feb. 20 issues, respectively, is now open for business. Publishers are encouraged to go to this page for information as to procedure and deadlines and new features. The deadline for information, to be entered at the PW/Edelweiss portal is Dec. 5, for adult titles publishing between Feb. 1, 2012, and July 31, 2012, and for children's titles, between Jan. 1, 2012, and June 30, 2012.
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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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