HBG Big News This Week: August 12-16, 2019

Following is a recap of major news at Hachette Book Group for the week of August 12-16, 2019:

Salinger ebooks released: Little, Brown announced this week that they will release ebook editions of J.D. Salinger’s four books for the first time, on August 13. The New York Times broke the news in a lengthy story featuring the author’s son Matt Salinger and the news was picked up by Publishers Weekly, The Associated Press, The Verge, Slate (in the voice of Holden Caulfield), The A.V. Club, CNN, the New York Daily News, Deadline.com, and many other venues. Matt Salinger was also interviewed on NPR’s Morning Edition, and Stephen Colbert mentioned Salinger’s move to ebooks on The Late Show (you can watch here, starting at around 17 minutes in).
Bestseller news: The Inn by James Patterson & Candice Fox (LB) debuts this week at #2 on both the Print Hardcover Fiction and Combined Print & Ebook Fiction bestseller lists, and at #2 on the USA Today bestseller list. Outfox by Sandra Brown (GCP) debuts at #5 on the Print Hardcover Fiction and #3 on the Combined P&E bestseller lists, and at #4 on the USA Today bestseller list. HBG has 12 books on the NYT list and our distribution clients have eight books on the list.
N.K. Jemisin & Indies First: the American Booksellers Association has chosen Orbit author N.K. Jemisin (The Broken Earth Trilogy, How Long Til Black Future Month?) as their 2019 spokesperson for Indies First. Watch a short video of Jemisin encouraging viewers to visit their local indie bookstores on November 30 in honor of Indies First/Small Business Saturday on YouTube, and the read the full announcement here.
Lonely Planet & HBG: This week, we announced that HBG has signed Lonely Planet, a leading travel media company and one of the world’s largest travel guidebook brands, as our newest sales and distribution client. Beginning March 1, 2020, HBG will handle US and Latin American sales and distribution, as well as web order fulfillment into North America. This new partnership means that, with the addition of Lonely Planet to our Rick Steves and Moon lines, HBG will be distributing approximately half of all the travel guides sold in the US.
Obama picks Maid: President Barack Obama’s Summer Reading List includes Stephanie Land’s Maid (Hachette Books), and the news of Obama’s summer picks ran in the New York Times (includingHachette Books’ & Land’s tweets), Huffington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Axios, O, The Oprah Magazine, USA Today, Forbes, the Washington Post, CNN and Time magazine.
B&N Discover Picks: Alix E. Harrow’s Ten Thousand Doors of January (Redhook) has been selected for B&N’s Fall 2019 Discover Great New Writers program.
Colleagues in the news: Little, Brown senior editor Ben George talks about the author-editor relationship in this extended Agents & Editors interview in the latest issue of Poets & Writers magazine.