Year: 2021

Posted on by

The hottest new book merch is… NFTs

Gary Vaynerchuk, a business author and NFT creator, included one NFT as a freebie for every purchase of 12 copies of his new book Twelve and a Half: Leveraging the Emotional Ingredients Necessary for Business Success. (You know, like cereal box prizes, if each cereal box prize burned down several hundred acres of the Amazon.) And, because everything I ever thought I knew about finance, books, and art is wrong, the book’s pre-orders now stand at over a million books—“one of the industry’s biggest advance orders for a single title in a 24-hour period,” according to the Wall Street Journal‘s reporting. Read more

(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)

Posted on by

Hollywood Loves Books and Authors are Cashing In Big-Time

In 2020 alone, streamers produced 532 new television shows. Their appetite for content is fueling a golden age of adaptations, according to Michelle Weiner, head of the books department at Creative Artists Agency (CAA), which includes the book-to-film department and the publishing group. Read more

(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)

Posted on by

PEN International calls on Turkish authorities not to prosecute Nobel laureate Pamuk for his writings

Turkish authorities should not charge Nobel laureate and PEN International Vice President Orhan Pamuk with “insulting” Atatürk and the Turkish flag, PEN International said in a statement on Tuesday, as an investigation has been launched into his novel “Nights of Plague” (Veba Geceleri). Read more

(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)

Posted on by

Pandemic sparks union activity where it was rare: Bookstores

Labor action has surged in many industries over the past two years, including in bookselling, a business where unions had been rare. Since 2020, employees have unionized or are attempting to do so everywhere from Printed Matter in New York City to Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle and Bookshop Santa Cruz in California. In Minnesota, workers at four Half Price Books stores have announced plans to affiliate with locals of the United Food and Commercial Workers union. Read more

Posted on by

Omar El Akkad wins $100K Scotiabank Giller Prize for novel What Strange Paradise

What Strange Paradise is a novel that tells the story of a global refugee crisis through the eyes of a child. Nine-year-old Amir is the only survivor from a ship full of refugees coming to a small island nation. He ends up with a teenage girl named Vanna, who lives on the island. Even though they don’t share a common language or culture, Vanna becomes determined to keep Amir safe. What Strange Paradise tells both their stories and how they each reached this moment, while asking the questions, “How did we get here?” and “What are we going to do about it?” Read more

(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)

Posted on by

Here are this year’s World Fantasy Award winners

The winners of this year’s World Fantasy Awards were announced this weekend at the World Fantasy Convention in Montreal, Canada. Considered one of the most prestigious honors for fantasy and speculative fiction, the award celebrates writers and artists who published work during the previous calendar year. Previous winners include C.L. Polk, Emma Törzs, and Kij Johnson. Writers Megan Lindholm and Howard Waldrop were also honored at the convention with Lifetime Achievement Awards. Read more

(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)

Posted on by

Is Superman Circumcised? favourite to win Oddest book title of the year

Six books are in the running for the 43rd prize, nominated by members of the book trade, with Curves for the Mathematically Curious up against Hats: A Very Unnatural History, The Life Cycle of Russian Things: From Fish Guts to Fabergé, and Miss, I Don’t Give a Shit: Engaging with Challenging Behaviour in Schools. Read more

(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)