HBG Big News This Week: November 12-16, 2018

Following is a recap of major news at Hachette Book Group for the week of November 12-16, 2018:

Bestsellers: HBG has 18 books on New York Times list this week. Our distribution clients have two #1s—Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, The Meltdown (Amulet), grabbed the #1 slot on the Children’s Series list and Construction Site on Christmas Night by Sherri Duskey Rinker (Chronicle) tops the Children’s Picture Books list.

Baillie Gifford Prize: Serhii Plokhy has won the 2018 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction for Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy (Basic Books). This prestigious UK award comes with a £30,000 ($38,000) purse. The news was reported by the Associated Press, the Guardian, and many others.

PNBA Award: Thor Hanson’s Buzz (Basic Books) has been shortlisted for the 2019 Pacific Northwest Book Award. Winners be announced in early January and promoted by PNBA member stores during the winter and spring of 2019.

800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards: HBG has five titles nominated for 2018 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards. In addition to The Snowball System (PublicAffairs) and Dopesick (LB) mentioned here last week, the following books made the longlist: Unsafe Thinking by Jonah Sachs (Da Capo) in the innovation & Creativity category, So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo (Seal) in the Personal Development & Human Behavior category, and This Is Day One by Drew Dudley (Hachette Books) in the Leadership & Strategy category. Category winners will be announced on December 4, overall winner on January 17. See the full list of nominees here.

Time’s Top Ten: Time magazine named its top ten books of the year in fiction and nonfiction, and two Little, Books made the cut—Circe by Madeline Miller (Fiction) and Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel (Nonfiction).

Movie news: Ivanhoe Pictures has acquired film rights to Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood and the World by Wall Street Journal investigative reporters Tom Wright and Bradley Hope (Hachette Books).  Ivanhoe president/CEO John Penotti is among the producers as is Michelle Yeoh – the two teamed up on Crazy Rich Asians.