by: Julie Bosman
If summer is the sleepy season in book publishing, the fall always seems to make up for it.
With Labor Day behind them, publishers are starting to roll out their heavyweight titles, the books sufficiently serious or flashy or important to draw attention in the crowded months leading up to the holidays.
Booksellers love the fall season, having carefully planned months in advance an inventory that this year takes in historical nonfiction and cookbooks, thrillers and memoirs. “There’s a cornucopia of big titles to suit everyone’s taste in every category,” said Lily Bartels, a book buyer at RJ Julia Booksellers in Madison, Conn.
There are novels by Ken Follett, Michael Cunningham, Nicole Krauss and Tom Clancy; cookbooks by Ina Garten and Jamie Oliver; humor books by both Amy Sedaris and David Sedaris; a collection of poems, notes and letters written by Marilyn Monroe; and a book by the Washington Post investigative reporter Bob Woodward that is so supersecret its publisher, Simon & Schuster, refused to reveal the title. (A Borders executive said that it is “Obama’s War.”)
This fall is especially intense because of the midterm elections, which coincide with a handful of political memoirs, polemics and studies of the Tea Party movement, President Obama and Glenn Beck whose releases have been timed to the weeks before November.
Tony Blair, the former prime minister of Britain, just released “A Journey” (Random House), an account of his time in office and its aftermath, and was promptly the target of protesters tossing eggs and flip-flops at his first public reading, in Dublin, on Saturday. Bill O’Reilly, the Fox News commentator, will see his latest political book, “Pinheads and Patriots” (William Morrow), published on Sept. 14. Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state, has written a memoir of her family and childhood in Alabama, titled “Extraordinary, Ordinary People” (Crown Archetype).
Looking back as well, there is Jimmy Carter’s account of his presidential years, “White House Diary” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), scheduled for release on Sept. 20; his vice president, Walter Mondale, will follow up with his own, “The Good Fight” (Scribner), on Oct. 5. George W. Bush’s highly anticipated memoir, “Decision Points” (Crown), will be “the biggest book of the season,” said Larry Norton, a senior vice president for merchandising at Borders. (According to a USA Today/Gallup poll last week Mr. Bush is still heavily blamed for the country’s economic woes. His book will come out a week after the midterms.)
Publishers noted an unusual pile-up of books on musical figures, including “Frank: The Voice” (Doubleday), a new biography of Frank Sinatra by James Kaplan; “Life” (Little, Brown), a memoir by Keith Richards, the legendary Rolling Stones guitarist, that is widely expected to be a best seller once it is released on Oct. 26; “Decoded” (Spiegel & Grau), by Jay-Z; and “Finishing the Hat” (Knopf), by Stephen Sondheim, a collection of lyrics (“With Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes,” the subtitle notes); not to mention books by Ricky Martin, Rick Springfield, Susan Boyle and Bret Michaels of Poison.
The fall is really a long lead-in to the holiday season, the period when bookstores see the highest volume of sales for the year.
Publishers will be carefully watching two of the biggest bookstore chains, Barnes & Noble and Borders, which are both having a tumultuous year. Barnes & Noble is in the middle of a proxy fight for control of the company, and Borders has struggled with sales and its digital products.
“The big concern has to be the uncertainty generated by both Barnes & Noble and Borders at this point,” said Laurence J. Kirshbaum, a literary agent. “They are such an important part of Christmas, and the industry needs to have two buoyant chains. The independents obviously can pick up some of the slack, and the so-called big-box stores will have a very good fall. But for the vast array of titles beyond best sellers that come out in the fall, the large superstores are critical.”
Of course there is always the sleeper hit. As The New York Observer noted last week, preorders propelled Stephen Hawking’s new book, “The Grand Design” (Bantam), to the top of the Amazon best-seller list — past Jonathan Franzen’s “Freedom,” Suzanne Collins’s “Mockingjay,” and all three books in the Stieg Larsson “Millennium” trilogy — after excerpts revealed that Mr. Hawking calls God “redundant.” And the book wasn’t even on sale until Tuesday.
Book buyers, analyzing the lineup of fall titles, said they saw a tendency to play it safe with well-known authors with very big, sure-thing books.
“It’s the tried and true,” said Patricia Bostelman, the vice president for marketing at Barnes & Noble. “From the science fiction genre and the thriller genre, authors like Tom Clancy who haven’t published in a while. It’s a very solid season with real sparks.”
Cathy Langer, the lead buyer for the Tattered Cover bookstores in Denver, cited as examples Philip Roth, who has a new novel, “Nemesis” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), and the latest from “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” “Earth (The Book)” (Grand Central Publishing).
“There are a lot of books coming out from writers who traditionally do really well, books that will perform,” she said. “Some are fun, like the Jon Stewart and Amy Sedaris, and some of them are a little more thoughtful. I know there’s a lot of trepidation with the economy and what’s happening with e-books, but I feel like publishers are bringing out some really solid titles that we’re going to sell really well.”
from: NY Times
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