Category Winners
Though overall print unit sales are basically flat so far compared to last year, several categories have posted double-digit gains. Here are the big category winners so far:
House & Home/Gardening
Up 34%, from 1 million units to 1.4 million
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up really cleaned up.
Biography & Autobiography
Up 24%, from 8.3 million units to 10.4 million
Two war stories, American Sniper and Unbroken, drove this category.
Graphic Novels
Up 18%, from 3.5 million units to 4.2 million
No single title stands out, but strong showings from the Saga series and the Walking Dead franchise led the way.
Suspense/Thrillers
Up 10%, from 8.5 million units to 9.3 million
The Girl on the Train was the runaway hit here.
From the Newsletters
Cartoonist Jonathan Case provides a behind-the-scenes look at how a page from his forthcoming graphic novel, The New Deal (Dark Horse), came together.
Why a group of Canadian children’s book authors and illustrators is unhappy with Vancouver publisher Simply Read.
Strong sales of comics and graphic novels at the end of 2014 carried into 2015, according to our annual comics retailer survey.
Some things indie authors considering setting up their own POS system should know.
How The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook (Schocken) went from being a nearly lost relic of the early 20th century to a 21st-century bestseller.
The most-read review on publishersweekly.com last week was Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, by Elizabeth Gilbert (Riverhead).
Blogs
The young guns of publishing (circa 1998) and a little Bloomsday cheer: these are just a couple things you may have missed if you haven’t stopped by PW’s Tumblr lately.
An update to ShelfTalker’s hugely popular Stars So Far feature, listing all of the starred reviews for children’s and YA books published this year.
Podcasts
PW senior writer Andrew Albanese discusses Amazon’s decision to change its Kindle Unlimited royalty payouts, and why that will do little to quiet the critics.
PW comics reviews editor Heidi MacDonald talks with Top Cow Productions’s Matt Hawkins about publishing, the history of Image Comics, and writing comics.
R.L. Stine and Marc Brown talk about their creepy new picture book, The Little Shop of Monsters (Little, Brown), and why the project felt like a departure for both of them.
Eric Burns discusses his book 1920: The Year That Made the Decade Roar (Pegasus) and PW senior writer Andrew Albanese previews ALA.
Events
Going to the American Library Association Annual Conference in San Francisco? PW is! Come see us at booth 2715.
