Amy Einhorn

Amy Einhorn has been named president and publisher of Macmillan Publishing's Henry Holt division, effective immediately. Einhorn had been executive v-p and publisher of Flatiron Books, which she joined in 2014, the year after Bob Miller founded the Macmillan division. Before that, she was head of Amy Einhorn Books at Penguin Random House. Einhorn succeeds Ben Schrank, who is leaving the company.

Einhorn will report to Macmillan president Don Weisberg, who said, "Amy's publishing acumen, keen editorial instincts, and strong author relationships make her uniquely qualified to carry on the legacy of Holt. Since arriving at Flatiron Books she has been a crucial part of their success, bringing her editorial eye and publishing expertise to the New York Times bestsellers Truly Madly Guilty and Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty, The Guest Book by Sarah Blake, Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson, This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel, I.M. by Isaac Mizrahi, and James Comey's #1 New York Times bestseller A Higher Loyalty, amongst others. I cannot imagine Holt's future being in better hands."

Einhorn commented: "I am thrilled to be moving to Henry Holt. It has such an esteemed history and list of talented authors. It is an honor to be entrusted with such a venerable publishing house. I am particularly excited to begin working with the wonderful team at Holt. I've admired so many people there for years. I can't wait to see what we'll create together."

Weisberg said that in the past year, Schrank "has been a positive and hardworking presence at Holt, helping to bring in new talent and authors. I have known and worked with Ben for a long time and have always admired his intelligence and publishing talent. I wish him all the best."

Schrank, who earlier had been publisher of Razorbill, succeeded longtime Holt head Stephen Rubin.

Some 65% of Canadian independent booksellers saw higher revenue from new print books between 2017 and 2018, according to a new BookNet Canada survey.

The survey, published last week as part of a larger report called What's in Store: The State of Independent Bookselling in Canada 2018, found that 28% of Canadian indies had increased revenue from remaindered books in that same time period, while 20% saw increased revenue from used print books. New frontlist books are the largest source of merchandise revenue for the average Canadian indie, accounting for some 37%, while new backlist books account for 31%.

The What's in Store report also found that three out of four Canadian booksellers view their bookstores as "healthy." A little over 60% of booksellers have the same view of the broader Canadian publishing industry, and half of surveyed booksellers reported increasing their inventory of Canadian books by about 1%-10% between 2017 and 2018.

The full report can be read here.

Lam Wing-Kee

Lam Wing-Kee, one of the five Hong Kong booksellers kidnapped by China in 2015 due to publishing titles critical of Chinese officials, raised nearly $100,000 in a single day earlier this month after launching a crowdfunding campaign to help open a new bookstore in Taiwan, the Hong Kong Free Press reported.

Lam launched the crowdfunding campaign late on Thursday, September 5, with a goal of 2.80 million New Taiwan dollars, or about $90,000. By Friday evening, Lam had raised more than 3.11 million TWD, or about $99,800, from more than 1,600 donations. He plans to find a location within the next six months and open the store by the middle of next year.

"Many thanks for everyone's support... thank you for giving me more confidence to accomplish this," Lam wrote on the bookstore project's Facebook page.

In April, Lam fled to Taiwan after Hong Kong announced plans to allow extraditions to China. The proposed extradition law resulted in months of protests, and although Carrlie Lam, chief executive of Hong Kong, announced recently that her government would drop the extradition law, protests continue in favor of democratic reforms.

Lam, meanwhile, has had plans to open a bookstore in Taiwan for a number of years. Last summer, his earlier plans fell apart after Chinese authorities pressured one of the store's investors into dropping out of the venture.

The American Booksellers Association has announced the names of 69 booksellers who will receive scholarships to attend Winter Institute 15 next January in Baltimore, Md., Bookselling This Week reported. 

The scholarships will cover the conference fee, four nights at a hotel in the ABA block and transportation costs up to $400. Booksellers at any ABA member stores who had never attended Winter Institute or not attended in the last seven years were eligible for the scholarship. A 70th scholarship winner will be drawn from booksellers who drop off their business card at the ABA booth during any of the fall regional trade shows.

"We are enormously grateful for the generous support of our sponsors," said Matt Zoni, director of development and publisher relations for the ABA. "In addition to lead sponsor Ingram, this year we have over 100 large and small publisher sponsors without which the Winter Institute would not be possible and which have contributed to funding an extraordinary number of bookseller scholarships. We encourage all ABA members to join us in thanking our sponsors for their ongoing commitment to independent bookselling."

Registration for Wi15 will open tomorrow, September 18. The full list of scholarship winners can be found here.

David Hagberg, author of international thrillers who was best known for his 30 Kirk McGarvey novels, died September 8, at age 76. The McGarvey titles included Abyss, The Cabal, The Expediter and Allah's Scorpion. His most recent novel in the series, First Kill, was published last May. Hagberg also wrote 13 novels under the name Sean Flannery.

The former Air Force cryptographer was occasionally referred to as "the Nostradamus of novelists" because many of his novels anticipated important events, including the fall of the Soviet Union before the Berlin Wall came down, the military coup against Gorbachev and the Chechnyan terrorists' massacre of a school full of children. His upcoming novel, Crash (April 2020), co-authored with the financial journalist Larry Light, explores a worldwide economic collapse precipitated by massive global debt and greedy, devious Wall Street billionaires.  

Hagberg published his first novel, Twister, in 1975. He apprenticed as a spy author by contributing more than 20 "work-for-hire" entries in the Nick Carter-Killmaster series of espionage novels between 1976 and 1987 as well as wrote "work-for-hire" novels based on the Flash Gordon comic strip.

Co-author of two eco-thrillers with former Senator Byron Dorgan (D.-N.D.), Hagberg also co-wrote the memoir Mutiny with Boris Gindin, who had been the executive officer aboard the ship Storozhevoy, on which Tom Clancy based The Hunt for Red October. When Clancy's novel was published, Clancy took Gindin, Hagberg, their editor and their publisher, Tom Doherty, to a Baltimore Orioles game, where they sat in the owner's box and Gindin explained what really happened during the mutiny that helped to launch Clancy's career.

Hagberg's books were nominated for three Edgars and three American Mystery Awards. In addition, his Sean Flannery novel The Kremlin Letter was nominated for an American Book Award.  

Last Thursday, the first part of the American Booksellers Association's Fall 2019 Kids' Next List was delivered to nearly half a million of the country's best book readers, going to 459,481 customers of 140 participating bookstores. The next Kids' Next List will be published October 24.

The e-newsletter, powered by Shelf Awareness, features fall Kids' Next List titles, with bookseller quotes and "buy now" buttons that lead directly to the purchase page for the title on the sending store's website. The newsletter, which is branded with each store's logo, also includes an interview (from Bookselling This Week) with the author whose book was chosen by booksellers as the number-one Kids' Next List pick, in this case David Yoon, author of Frankly in Love (Putnam Books for Young Readers).

For a sample of the newsletter, see this one from Northshire Bookstore, Manchester Center, Vt., and Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

Book publishing reps Daley Farr (Coffee House), Mattan Comay (Graywolf), Matt Smiley (Univ. of Minnesota), Jill Nadeau (Penguin Young Readers), Jason Gobble (PRH Adult Green titles/Penguin Knopf), Stefan Moorehead (PRH Penguin) and John Hastie (PRH Blue/Random House/Crown) presented the hotly anticapted Fall titles from their respective publishers to a crowd of 55 Twin Cities booksellers at Magers & Quinn on Sunday night.

Literati Bookstore, Ann Arbor, Mich., is currently hosting its "first ever shelf talker contest." In a Facebook post, the bookseller noted that through September 30, "we invite you to write your own shelf talker (like the handwritten book recommendations our staff writes for our shelves) for the chance to win a store gift card and have your review featured on one of our displays at the end of the month!

"To participate, stop in store and pick up a card and contact info form, fill out the form and write a review for one of your favorite books, and return it to one of our booksellers in the store. Alternatively, you can submit your review and your contact info to community@literatibookstore.com. Make sure to put the title of your book on the top of the card and sign your name on the bottom--and happy shelf talking!"

Dream Baby Dream by Jimmy Marble (Chronicle Chroma).

Today:
Morning Edition: Attica Locke, author of Heaven, My Home (Mulholland Books, $27, 9780316363402).

Fresh Air: Eric Foner, author of The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution (Norton, $26.95, 9780393652574).

Tomorrow:
Good Morning America: Catherine Oxenberg, author of Captive: A Mother's Crusade to Save Her Daughter from the Terrifying Cult NXIVM (Gallery, $16.99, 9781982100667).

CBS This Morning: Josh Campbell, author of Crossfire Hurricane: Inside Donald Trump's War on the FBI (Algonquin Books, $28.95, 9781616209506).

Daily Show: Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, authors of She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement (Penguin Press, $28, 9780525560340).

Starz has unveiled the first trailer for the European crime drama Dublin Murders, based on Tana French's novels, Deadline reported. Premiering November 10, the series stars Killian Scott (C.B. Strike) and Sarah Greene (Penny Dreadful).

The psychological thriller is adapted by series creator and writer Sarah Phelps. The cast also includes Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, Moe Dunford, Leah McNamara, Ian Kenny, Eugene O'Hare, Jonny Holden, Conleth Hill and Peter McDonald. Lead director of Dublin Murders is Saul Dibb, supported by John Hayes and Rebecca Gatward.

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Ken Watanabe (Godzilla: King of the Monsters) has signed on to star opposite Ansel Elgort and executive produce Tokyo Vice, a drama series for HBO Max, WarnerMedia's upcoming streaming platform, Deadline reported. The 10-episode project is based on the book by Jake Adelstein and comes from Tony-winning playwright J.T. Rogers, producer John Lesher and Endeavor Content.

The longlist for the 2019 National Book Award for Young People's Literature consists of:

The Undefeated by Kwame Alexander, illustrated by Kadir Nelson (Versify/HMH)
SHOUT by Laurie Halse Anderson (Viking Books for Young Readers)
Pet by Akwaeke Emezi (Make Me a World/PRH)
A Place to Belong by Cynthia Kadohata, illustrated by Julia Kuo (Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books/S&S)
Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks by Jason Reynolds (Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books/S&S)
Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay (Kokila/PRH)
Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All by Laura Ruby (Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins)
1919: The Year That Changed America by Martin W. Sandler (Bloomsbury Children's Books)
Out of Salem by Hal Schrieve (Triangle Square/Seven Stories Press)
Kiss Number 8 by Colleen AF Venable and Ellen T. Crenshaw (First Second Books/Macmillan)

Finalists will be unveiled on October 8, and the winners announced at the National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner on November 20 in New York City. 

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The shortlist for the 2019 Financial Times and McKinsey & Company Business Book of the Year Award, recognizing "a work which provides the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues," is:

Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez (Abrams)
Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein (Riverhead Books)
Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America by Christopher Leonard (Simon & Schuster)
The Third Pillar: The Revival of Community in a Polarised World by Raghuram Rajan (Penguin Press)
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff (PublicAffairs)
The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution by Gregory Zuckerman (Portfolio Penguin)

The winner will be announced December 3.

In her second story collection, False Bingo, Jac Jemc delivers 20 compact, disquieting stories that are starkly realistic yet tinged with a sense of otherworldly menace. Her first collection, A Different Bed Every Time, blurred the lines between reality and fantasy in short, unconventional tales. False Bingo continues this exploration of the intersection between tangible danger and unknown fears.

"Any Other," the first entry, acts as a warning to readers that they should be careful about believing what they read. An encounter in a coffee shop between a man and a woman leads to the kind of unexpected plot switch of which O. Henry would approve. "The Principal's Ashes," dark and funny, takes place in a Catholic elementary school. Mrs. Sayer, a second-grade teacher, begins her year by predicting which of her students will kill the class frog. She teaches Alan Ginsberg's Howl, and has the students re-create part of Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums. Her goal is "to expose them to experience and knowledge beyond their years" in order to prevent their purity from delivering her the same fate that befell the principal.

As in The Grip of It, Jemc's novel of everyday fears bleeding into nightmarish scenarios, she conjures a house that seems haunted in "Don't Let's." A woman, hobbled by a broken leg, rents a house by herself near a swamp in Georgia. "I think I hear things in the house," she says to a neighbor, who laughingly tells her she has a "boo hag": a night monster who comes to steal one's breath. She's unsure if the boo hag is real, but after increasingly disturbing events, decides to give herself up to the idea, thinking the boo hag "took your energy if you were still, but stole your skin if you struggled."

Jemc's ability to build an undercurrent of threat in mundane situations is reminiscent of Shirley Jackson and, in fact, "Half Dollar" is subtitled "After Shirley Jackson." Two young girls play a cruel prank on a widow, leading her to believe that they saw the spirit of her dead husband. Margaret, less enthusiastic about the prank than Patty, realizes that she has no idea to what lengths Patty will go, and "doubt fell over where it was I should have laid my trust."

Reading the brief story "Loitering," about a young woman at a bar deciding how to make an important decision, is like peeking through a curtain at a small but major event. The more expansive "Maulawiyah" tells the story of Raila, a young woman attending a wellness retreat. She hopes someone will "force her to be disciplined," and becomes unwillingly entangled with another resident who forces eerie familiarity. In all her writing, Jemc displays dexterity with characters and precision with words and sentences, creating small worlds that satisfy even as they disturb. Fans of Daisy Johnson and Helen Oyeyemi will relish these stories of mistrust, danger and regrets. --Cindy Pauldine, bookseller, the river's end bookstore, Oswego, N.Y.

Shelf Talker: False Bingo collects disquieting stories of everyday life overshadowed by paranoia and marred by dark edges.

The bestselling self-published books last week as compiled by IndieReader.com:

1. The Oracle by Jonathan Cahn
2. My Wildest Dream by Barbara Freethy
3. Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sharon L. Lechter
4. The Prisoner's Key (Glass and Steele Book 8) by C.J. Archer
5. The Courage to Go Forward by David Cordani and Dick Traum
6. Handsome Rancher by Lori Wilde and Liz Alvin
7. This Is Love by Natasha Madison
8. Accidental Rebel: A Marriage Mistake Romance by Nicole Snow
9. Broken Knight by L.J. Shen
10. I Hate You by Ilsa Madden-Mills

[Many thanks to IndieReader.com!]