HBG Big News This Week: October 7-11, 2019
Following is a recap of major news at Hachette Book Group for the week of October 7-11, 2019:
#1 Bestseller: Chris Colfer’s A Tale of Magic… (LBYR) debuts this week at #1 on the NYT Middle Grade Hardcover bestseller list! Other debuts this week include GCP’s Imaginary Friends by Stephen Chbosky (#10, Print Hardcover Fiction) and When Life Gives You Pears by Jeannie Gaffigan (#15, Combined P&E Nonfiction), and LB’s The 18th Abduction by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro (#4, Paperback Trade Fiction). Overall, HBG has 15 titles and our client publishers have seven books on the NYT list.
Major launch: Ronan Farrow’s Catch and Kill (LB) is the book everyone’s talking about! This week, in advance of the 10/15 on sale date, Variety leaked some of the news in the book, and the media rushed to play catch up, with coverage on ABC News, CBS, CNN, Fox Business, Fox News, NBC News, USA Today, Slate, Entertainment Tonight, People, Washington Post, and more. The Hollywood Reporter’s first, exclusive interview with Farrow and The New Yorker’s excerpts ran this week, along with a New York Times review and 2 segments on Good Morning America (Part I & Part II), and ABC’s World News Tonight will air a story this evening. Next week the publicity juggernaut continues, with ABC’s Nightline and The View, CBS This Morning, CNN’s New Day and The Lead with Jake Tapper, PBS Newshour, CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, feature interviews in USA Today and Entertainment Weekly, among many others. Looking ahead, Farrow will do interviews on CBS’s Late Show with Stephen Colbert, HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher, and CNN/PBS’s Amanpour & Company.
Hachette Reads: copies of the new Hachette Reads title, Shea Serrano’s Movies (and Other Things) from Twelve, are flying out of our displays. Serrano had a great week of media and appearances, with interviews on NPR’s All Things Considered, Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, Esquire, Wired, Men’s Journal, Dallas Morning News, Texas Monthly, Houston Chronicle, Seattle Times, AV Club WNYC’s All of It with Alison Stewart, NBC Latino, a Viral Buzzfeed Quiz, and lots of great podcast interviews.
Living Now Book Award: Dr. Arun Singh’s Your Heart, My Hands (Center Street) won a gold medal in the 2019 Living Now Book Awards, in the category of Inspirational Memoir.
Rick Steves news: this week, Avalon author Rick Steves announced the grant recipients for his 2019 Climate Smart Commitment. He’ll be supporting 11 organizations through a “self-imposed carbon tax” totaling $1 million for the year – read more here. Rick was interviewed by Quartz about this initiative, and the announcement was also picked up by Travel & Leisure, Yahoo Finance, and many more.
Thinkers50 award: Thinkers50, the global ranking of management thinkers, announced today that Rosabeth Moss Kanter, the author of PublicAffairs’ forthcoming Think Outside the Building: How Advanced Leaders Can Change the World One Small Innovation at a Time, is the recipient of their Lifetime Achievement Award. Read more about the award and the author here.
Orbit AR: Orbit launched Augmented Reality with Google Lens for their Orbit New Voices titles at New York Comicon (check out PW’s Pic of the Day). Much more in development with Augmented Reality, stay tuned!