A posthumous Michael Chrichton novel erupts on the scene, the Sawtelle family gets struck by literary lightning (again), TikTok is breaking things (again), book bans turn middle school levels of silly (again), librarians take a road trip, and a new publisher announces their first ten books.
Festival Fuss: For the last several weeks, an unlikely source has been stirring up book trouble overseas. Fossil Free Books, an organization whose purpose is to free the book industry from fossil fuels and fossil fuel related finance, has targeted investment management firm Baillie Gifford with open letters and demands for divestment. Baillie Gifford sponsors multiple literary festivals including Hay, Cheltenham, and Edinburgh as well as the prestigious Baillie Gifford literary award. FFB has called on the festivals to end their relationship with the investment firm unless Baillie Giffords divests from any fossil fuel companies from their portfolios as well as from any company that benefits Israel. Roughly 2% of Baillie Gifford’s portfolio fit that description and they claim that “We are managers of other people’s money, not our own. We are not in a position to make exclusions of that nature based on our own ethical judgments, or in response to pressure from outside groups.” The end result is that they have pulled their sponsorship from these festivals which are now facing huge budget deficits. It seems to us that forcing festivals to bite the hand that feeds them may not produce the results that FFB intends.
Battle of the Bans: Florida and Texas are bringing us the humor this week in the ongoing war on words. One Florida school district is banning a book about book bans and an appeals court in Texas just ruled that books can’t be banned for containing the words butt and fart. Gotta love 2024 for giving us the Book Ban Bingo middle school edition.
All Star Librarians: Bestselling children’s author Jeff Kinney honored eight lucky librarians last weekend with a trip to Boston. Picked from a pool of hundreds of nominees, these librarians are at the center of the current culture wars on books. Kinney wanted to celebrated them and their impact on their communities. The all expense paid trip included a duck boat tour and a shopping spree at Kinney’s bookstore–An Unlikely Story. In a culture fraught with book bans, it is encouraging to see book lovers banning together (see what we did there?). Kinney is gearing up to release the 19th installment in his Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, Hot Mess. Which is a great way to describe the crazy world we’re in right now.
Author’s Equity Announces First Ten Books: Earlier this year, brand new publisher, Author’s Equity, launched. Based on a profit-sharing model, and stacked with an impressive leadership team, they are hoping to shake up the traditional publishing model. And this week they officially announced their first ten books. Soon they’ll be releasing new books by Seth Godin, James Frey, Rachell Hollis, Kyle Mills and many others. What’s not to love here? An author-focused publishing house committed to bringing more books into the world. Sign us up.
What A Twist: It’s high time we brought you another overdue library book story. This one comes from a psychic that borrowed a book from the LA public library in 1977. But not just any book, this one was about himself. The Geller Papers was a series of government funded research experiments that was published as a book. Uri Geller borrowed the book and never returned it, instead, taking it with him from place to place for the next 47 years until he finally forgot about it. Geller recently found the book and shipped it to his daughter who still lives in the Los Angeles area. She returned it for him with trepidation, expecting a massive fine. As it turns out, the LA library system no longer charges for late books. We have to ask: as a psychic did he see this coming?
Foreign Rights: The rise of BookTok and Bookstagram has had an interesting effect on European bookselling. Inexpensive English language versions of popular US books are selling more than their foreign language versions. This is because people now want their books to match what they see on social media, even if English is not their native language. This means that more books are being sold and those books are being purchased by a younger clientele (both good things). But this also means that sales of foreign language versions are down and that greatly affects authors both in foreign rights and royalties departments. Publishers are getting creative by printing translated books with their original US cover art and titles in English. We give everyone involved an A++ for creativity and problem solving.
The Unintended Benefits of Reading: Mental Floss published a list of 6 unintended benefits of reading. From increased creativity, to more empathy, improved language, longer lifespan and more. Reading adds more value to your life than the enjoyment alone. We can’t argue with this. And neither should you. Trust the science.
Author In Residence: Ever dreamed of writing the next great American novel in the hallowed halls of a literary hero? Well, that oddly specific dream can now come true. Ursula K LeGuin’s home will become a writer’s residency program in Portland Oregon. Soon the house will be available for a year-long residency to one lucky author chosen by the Literary Arts board. Fun fact: the house was built in 1899 from a Sears & Roebuck catalog. The resident author will have the good luck to write in the same rooms where LeGuin penned famous works such as The Left Hand of Darkness. Currently, Literary Arts is campaigning for funds to operate the program and we are looking forward to seeing new authors come out of it.
Scary Good Luck: RL Stine spoke with People Magazine about his rise to fame with the Goosebumps franchise. “Everything that ever happened to me was an accident,” said the second-best selling children’s author of all time. Originally intending to write funny books for adults, Stine found that there was no audience for such work. Then he stumbled onto a different demographic–kids. After the success of his first scary book for children–Fear Street–Stine began cranking out more books in the series, eventually writing a total of 62 books from 1992-1997. And at the height of his popularity, he was writing one book per month. Those of us who survived the 90s will fondly remember it as our Goosebumps era. Stine continues to work on both graphic novels and film adaptations of his older book. He will also be releasing a new series for YA readers this fall called The Graveyard Club. Excellent news! But, will it give us (you guessed it)...goosebumps?
Elle Really Wants to Be Margot: Elle Fanning has signed on to narrate one of the summer’s buzziest titles: Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe. As we reported previously Fanning has already signed on to play the main character in the upcoming movie adaptation by A24. Clearly she’s getting in character early.
I Don’t Wanna Grow Up: In today’s surprising revelation, we learned that the bestselling author James Patterson wrote the Toys-R-Us jingle. I know it, you know it, and now we can’t stop singing it. Turns out he is as good at jingles as he is at novels. While the toy store is now defunct, ruining a perfectly good theme song with a bad business model, we are happy to report that James Patterson continues to crank out bestsellers like his Michael Crichton co-authored and now instant #1 New York Times Bestselling novel, Eruption.
Shameless Self-Promotion: The Guardian reported on the growing trend of authors hiring outside help to promote their books. Whether it is meant to supplement the work their publishers are already doing, or to take their careers into their own hands, the days are long gone when authors could just be concerned with writing good books. The only shameful thing here is that they are now expected to wear too many hats: promoter, influencer, marketer, and manager. We miss the days of the garret and the typewriter and the rumpled author stumbling into the sun after months hidden away crafting their masterpieces.
A Not So Familiar Story: Oprah picked Familiaris by David Wroblewski for her 106th book club pick. This is a prequel to his 2008 novel The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, which was also an Oprah book club pick. We are huge fans of Edgar Sawtelle–the story of a family of dog breeders in Wisconsin and their mute son–and we’re so excited to read this new novel in the Sawtelle world. And congrats to Wroblewski for getting struck by celebrity-book-club-lightning twice!
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over at I’m So Glad You Asked. is chronicling the path to her newest novel over at I Will Tell You This.