Book News

On January 13, Scholastic, Inc., the publisher of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, posted on its Web site for retailers and distributors www.scholastic.com/custsupport/booksellers/harrypotter.htm, the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Agreement, which all retailers must sign and return by April 1 to qualify for pre-publication delivery. Scholastic also announced that the order deadline for delivery of the title before the July 16 on-sale date is May 6.

This week Book Sense announces the 2005 Valentine's Day Top Ten. The list is produced in conjunction with the Association of American Publishers' (AAP) Get Caught Reading initiative. This is part of an ongoing initiative with AAP to create seasonal lists based on the nominations of independent booksellers nationwide. The next Book Sense and AAP Get Caught Reading list will be an Easter/Passover Top Ten.

For the eight-week period ended January 9, 2005, and based on reporting from hundreds of independent bookstores nationwide.

Past Category Bestseller lists are available at www.bookweb.org/read/5677.

Attention Media: Please contact Meg Smith at [email protected] for reprint guidelines for your newspaper or magazine.

Dave King's teenaged writing endeavors included a novel penciled on a steno pad and a screenplay he thought would be a good vehicle for David Bowie (who never did respond to King's pitch).

Here is a preview of the February "Book Sense Picks." Independent booksellers in the Book Sense program will receive their Picks fliers in the January Red Box.

To help booksellers make the most of the July 16, 2005, publication of J.K.

In 1787, a group of zealous individuals gathered in a London bookshop to organize what would become a landmark undertaking: A campaign that would put an end to slavery in Great Britain. The campaign wasn't a simple one, but about 50 years later, the work of this enterprising group (which included one woman) would bring about justice for those enslaved. Their tireless efforts became a blueprint for human rights activism throughout the world, including the U.S.

Here is a preview of the titles to be featured on the Book Sense January "We Also Recommend." Downloadable PDFs of the flier and shelf-talkers, which include bibliographic information and booksellers' quotations for the 20 titles, will soon be available at www.bookweb.org/read/6977. The PDF flier also includes jacket images.

Recently, both Penguin Group and Simon & Schuster announced that they would be testing a new mass market format in hopes that it will give paperbacks a needed sales boost.

The sixth title in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series -- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince -- has been scheduled for release on Saturday, July 16, 2005, in the U.S., Britain, Canada, and Australia. The announcement was made on Tuesday, December 21, by Rowling's publishers, Scholastic and Bloomsbury.

The three finalists for The Story Prize, a new, annual literary award created to recognize outstanding short story collections, were recently announced: Edwidge Danticat (The Dew Breaker, Knopf); Cathy Day (The Circus in Winter, Harcourt); and Joan Silber (Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories, Norton).

For the four-week period ending December 12, 2004, and based on reporting from hundreds of independent booksellers nationwide.

Past Category Bestseller lists are available at www.bookweb.org/read/5677.

Attention Media: Please contact Meg Smith at [email protected] for reprint guidelines for your newspaper or magazine.

Betty Dukes is no Erin Brockovich. A middle-aged, African-American woman who thought sex discrimination was something unseemly and describes herself as a "preacher of the Gospel," Dukes -- who is currently employed as a 'greeter' at the Wal-Mart in Pittsburg, California -- is nevertheless poised to head a group of 1.6 million women in the largest civil rights class-action suit in history -- Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

On Tuesday, December 14, author Sue Monk Kidd, an indie favorite and 2004 Book Sense Book of the Year Award-winner for The Secret Life of Bees (Penguin), chose Stephanie Kallos' new novel Broken for You (Grove) as the next title to be read by the NBC Today Show's Today Book Club.