HBG Big News This Week: September 23-27, 2019

Following is a recap of major news at Hachette Book Group for the week of September 23-27, 2019:

Bestseller news:  debuting on the New York Times bestseller list this week are Orbit’s A Little Hatred by Joe Abercrombie (Orbit, #15 on Print Hardcover Fiction & #13 on Combined P&E Fiction), Liar, Liar by James Patterson & Candice Fox (GCP, #10 Print PB Fiction), Forever’s The Paris Orphan by Natasha Lester (#14 Print PB Fiction), and Elin Hilderbrand’s Winter in Paradise (Back Bay/LB, #15 Print PB Fiction). HBG has 23 books on the NYT list and our distribution clients have six books on the list.

AFI Lifetime Achievement Award: Julie Andrews will receive the American Film Institute’s 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award. Andrews’ memoir Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years(Hachette Books) will be published on October 15.

Axel Springer Award: Shoshana Zuboff, author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (PublicAffairs), is the most recent recipient of the Axel Springer Award. Axel Springer SE, the German media company, has been awarding the prize since 2016.  It is given to “outstanding personalities who are particularly innovative, and who generate and change markets, influence culture and at the same time face up to their responsibility to society.”  The three previous recipients were Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Berners-Lee, and Jeff Bezos.

Accessible Publishing: Hachette Livre signed the Accessible Books Consortium (ABC) Charter, committing to making its products fully accessible to all readers, including those who are blind, visually impaired, or otherwise print disabled.  Hachette Livre chairman and ceo Arnaud Nourry said: “For the book industry, making books accessible to the widest readership, including readers who are blind, visually impaired, or print disabled, not only makes economic sense, but is a moral imperative. If we, publishers, do not pioneer this duty on an industrial level, who will?” Read more about the Charter in Hachette Livre’s press release.

Center for Fiction prize: Joe Wilkins’ Fall Back Down When I Die (LB) made the shortlist for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize.