Ginger Kautz

Ginger Kautz has been named the new general manager at Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh, N.C., effective June 11. Kautz will be the fourth general manager in the bookstore's nearly 38-year history and succeeds Jason Jefferies, who is leaving to become general manager of Explore Booksellers in Aspen, Colo. Kautz joined Quail Ridge Books in 2018, most recently serving as buyer and assistant general manager.

"Quail Ridge Books is deeply rooted in Raleigh, and I look forward to growing our connection with the literary community in an environment where booksellers, authors, and readers flourish," Kautz said.

Owner Lisa Poole noted: "Since Ginger began at Quail Ridge Books, she has excelled in bookselling and being a team leader. We are thrilled Ginger is becoming our new general manager. Ginger, you rock!"

An avid reader of fiction and popular science, Kautz previously worked in B. Dalton and Barnes & Noble bookstores in a variety of roles, from bookseller through assistant store manager. 

Common Ground Books, a new LGBTQ and feminist bookstore, held a soft opening last weekend in Tallahassee, Fla. 

Owner Alex Spencer told WTXL that while the store won't be fully up and running until later in the summer, she wanted to be open for at least a few days during Pride Month. She plans to be open again on June 17 and 18 and is aiming for a grand opening in August.

The store will carry fiction and nonfiction for all ages with a focus on LGBTQ authors and stories as well as authors from marginalized backgrounds. Spencer intends for the store to be a safe, open space for everyone.

"Across Florida, it's important, especially with the current political situation, the gay community is starting to feel like the pressure and the stigma again," Spencer said, "so it's especially important for kids, for youth to know that there is community here and that we're fighting."

Heartleaf Books, a new and used bookstore that debuted as a pop-up shop last year, has signed a lease for a space in Providence, R.I., and will open a bricks-and-mortar storefront soon.

Co-owners Caroline Vericker and Mads Vericker, sisters and fellow librarians, announced the news last Friday. The bookstore, which they've chosen to run as a cooperative, will be located at 374 Atwells Ave., right next to St. John's Park.

While the bookstore sold predominantly used titles when it first opened at the Providence Flea market in July 2021, the Verickers plan for the physical store's inventory to be a mix of about 75% new titles and 25% new. There will be books for all ages, with a focus on books by people of color and by queer authors; in addition to fiction and literature there will be collections of metaphysical titles, astrology books and books about witchcraft. They also plan for houseplants to be a major part of the store's nonbook offerings.

The Verickers are busy getting the space ready and bringing in founder members for the co-op, which will be both a consumer co-op and a worker-owner co-op. Owner-members receive discounts on books, access to exclusive events and newsletters, voting rights on co-op matters and eligibility to run for the co-op's board.

In 2021, publishers' audiobook revenue increased 25%, to $1.6 billion, marking the 10th straight year of double-digit growth, according to the Audio Publishers Association's Sales Survey, conducted by InterQ.

Nearly 74,000 audiobooks were published in 2021, a 6% increase over 2020. Science fiction and fantasy narrowly edged out mysteries/thrillers/suspense as the most popular genre by percentage of sales, with romance and fiction following close behind, and increases in children's and YA revenue. The romance category showed the most growth, with a 75% increase in revenues, followed by self-help (34%) and science fiction (32%).

In addition, Edison Research conducted the APA's 2022 Consumer Survey. Among the findings:

• The percentage of Americans 18+ who have ever listened to an audiobook was 45%, up from 44% in 2020.
• Membership in audiobook services increased, with 41% of listeners indicating they subscribe to at least one such service.
• 54% of audiobook listeners are under the age of 45.
• 70% of consumers agree audiobooks are a good choice for relaxing.
• 61% of parents say their children listen to audiobooks, compared to the 35% measured in 2020. This increase is almost certainly due to pandemic-related school disruptions. Listeners continue to prefer professional narration over author-read books.  

Key corresponding data from Edison Research's Share of Ear report, which tracks daily listening habits for Americans 13+.  

• Overall share of time spent listening to audiobooks has grown 106% since 2017.
• Daily audiobook listeners spend more time listening to books than any other form of audio (radio, podcasts, etc.).
• Daily reach of audiobook consumption has grown 94% since 2017.
• Daily audiobook listeners spend 2+ hours more per day listening to audio content than the general population (6:34 vs 4:11).

The European & International Booksellers Federation has released the Global Bookselling Markets Report 2021, exploring the total sales numbers for the past year and analyzing emerging trends to understand how the industry can respond to future development opportunities and challenges. The report is based on a member survey carried out by EIBF in April 2021. National booksellers associations in 18 countries responded to the written questionnaire. In addition to the survey answers, the report includes supporting information gathered by EIBF during the course of the past year.

"The bookselling industry has been reshaped since the outbreak of the pandemic in early 2020, with many booksellers undergoing a complete reinvention of their business models, often having to incorporate practices not associated with their traditional core business. In these changing circumstances, it is important to acknowledge the importance of customer interaction in bookshops," EIBF noted, adding: "As we try to understand the current trends shaping the global bookselling sector, we have to consider the ones that are gaining traction due to pandemic restrictions, such as lower footfalls in the shops, primarily digital audience groups and overreliance on online sales channels, among others."
 
Looking at overall book sales numbers, across all sales channels, the report indicated that the majority of analyzed markets saw increased sales by at least 5% during the past year, with a third of those markets increasing by 15% or more. EIBF noted that "it is important to acknowledge that not all growth is equitable, as some sales channels gained more than others. Despite overall market growth, physical sales in bookshops continue to lag behind the digital sales channels in many countries. This was further exacerbated by national lockdown measures in the first half of 2021."

Globally, EIBF saw a significant increase in online sales, with online strategy identified as crucial for the increase in sales across the book markets worldwide. In addition, streaming services witnessed the biggest jump in market share in the past year. "Even in countries where streaming services had little to no presence before the pandemic, book markets are now seeing an exponential growth of audiobook streaming channels.

EIBF identified three key development areas for the rest of 2022: upscaling digital presence and optimizing online sales channels, reviewing the supply chain, especially around paper and shipping logistics, and preparing for limited customer purchasing power. Download the complete Global Bookselling Markets Report 2021 here.

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BookNet Canada's latest installment in its blog mini-series on book-to-screen adaptations moved in for a closeup of the 2021 Netflix TV series Maid and its impact on sales of Stephanie Land's 2019 book Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother's Will to Survive. Looking at "the Maid effect" on Canadian sales and library holds, BookNet Canada's findings include:

• Netflix announced that Maid would be adapted into a TV show at the end of November 2019. Library holds for Maid were up 88% in the same month, while sales saw their increase in December 2019--up 69%.
• Casting announcements for the TV show began in August 2020 and continued through November 2020, with sales for Maid up 7% during that time period and library holds increasing 20%.
• Filming had begun by the end of September 2020, alongside a 5% increase in sales for Maid from August 2020.  
• By April 2021, filming had ended. In the same month, sales increased 125% and library holds for Maid were up 17% over March 2021.
• A teaser trailer was released in August 2021 and the show's full trailer was released in September 2021, with accompanying sales for Maid up 237%.

Maid premiered on Netflix at the beginning of October 2021, and during the month sales continued to increase a significant 3,414%, BookNet Canada noted. Library holds were also up 44% over September 2021.

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Australian bookseller's winter moment: "It's a day of (beautifully) desolate weather on Peramangk country but the shop is now open for warm, gentle browsing until 5 p.m.. Nothing but the soothingly narcotic sounds of @BJM_Band @antonnewcombe on the stereo" Matilda Bookshop in Stirling, SA, tweeted recently. --Robert Gray

Oprah Winfrey has chosen Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley (Knopf) as her latest Oprah's Book Club selection. Mottley, who was named Oakland's youth poet laureate in 2018, is almost 20 years old and began her debut novel when she was 16.

Winfrey said she was struck by Mottley's power to convey, in vivid and precise language, trauma, love, and everything in between: "It always brings me joy to help introduce new writers to the reading community, and this young poet wowed me with her ode and elegy to Oakland, and her acute and insightful depictions of youth, injustice, the legacy of incarceration, and the resilience of community and chosen family."

Upon hearing the news, Mottley said: "I was absolutely floored when Ms. Winfrey popped up in what I thought was a regular meeting with my publisher. It was the surprise of a lifetime! I am beyond grateful to be able to share my debut novel with the passionate readers of Oprah's Book Club."

On June 30, a livestream conversation between Oprah and the author, along with four followers of Oprah's Book Club, will air on Oprah Daily.

Inkwood Books, Haddonfield, N.J., shared a photo of the shop's front window display, noting: "The books in our window #wearorange  in recognition of National Gun Violence Awareness Day on June 3, and to honor those lost to gun violence."  

Penguin Random House Publisher Services, Disney Publishing Worldwide and Marvel Publishing have announced that effective April 1, 2023, PRHPS will exclusively sell and distribute Disney's newly published and backlist adult and children's physical books across all mass, trade and independent bookselling sales channels. This arrangement expands the PRHPS relationship with Marvel, begun in October 2021, also to distribute Marvel collected editions and graphic novels to trade bookstore retailers and wholesalers.

Tonya Agurto, Disney Publishing Worldwide's senior v-p, publisher, said, "As we continue to grow our imprints, expand our audiences, and build our slate of diverse, bestselling authors and artists, we are thrilled to work with PRH's best in class sales and operational team who can truly help our business reach new heights, and ensure our books and graphic novels find their way into readers' hands and hearts."

Jeff Abraham, president of PRHPS, said, "As great believers in the future of physical retail, we couldn't be more excited by this opportunity to grow the bookstore market for Disney Publishing and Marvel imprints, franchises, and brands, with booksellers nationwide and worldwide, for the stories readers want. We will enjoy supporting our creative partners--the authors and illustrators whose brilliant storytelling is developed with their outstanding publishers--in bringing their works to the widest readership with our standard-setting supply chain and passionate, experienced sales teams."

Burgin Streetman has been promoted to assistant director of Trinity University Press and will continue as director of marketing and sales. She started her career in books more than 30 years ago as fiction manager at the Doubleday Book Shop on Fifth Avenue in New York City and later worked as assistant to the v-p of children's books at Barnes & Noble, published books for the Muppets, and was director of marketing and publicity for Artisan Books. She joined Trinity University Press in 2012.

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At Chronicle Books:

Kate Herman has been promoted to associate director of key accounts.

Melissa Grecco has been promoted to senior sales manager.

Barrett Hooper has been promoted to senior sales & ecommerce analyst.

Hannah Delgado has been hired as specialty sales assistant.

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Abigail Sokolsky has been promoted to marketing manager for the Workman Kids, Workman, Workman Calendars, and Algonquin Young Readers imprints. Previously she was marketing coordinator and marketing assistant.

Curse Undone by Brandie June (CamCat Books/IPG).

Today:
Fresh Air: Chris Blackwell, co-author of The Islander: My Life in Music and Beyond (Gallery Books, $28.99, 9781982172695).

Tomorrow:
Good Morning America: Simu Liu, author of We Were Dreamers: An Immigrant Superhero Origin Story (Morrow, $27.99, 9780063046498).

Also on GMA: Grant Hill, author of Game: An Autobiography (Penguin Press, $30, 9780593297407).

Kelly Clarkson Show: Brad Meltzer, author of I Am Dolly Parton (Rocky Pond Books, $15.99, 9780593405925).

Netflix has set a premiere date of August 5 and released a full trailer for The Sandman, the highly anticipated series based on the DC graphic novels by Neil Gaiman. The Hollywood Reporter noted that Netflix won rights to the show in 2019 with an 11-episode, straight to series pickup. Warner Bros. TV produces; Gaiman, Allan Heinberg (Wonder Woman, Grey's Anatomy) and David S. Goyer (Blade, The Dark Knight) are writing the series, with Heinberg serving as showrunner. All three are executive producers.

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Netflix also released the first teaser for The Midnight Club, a 10-episode series adapted from the works of Christopher Pike, Deadline reported. Mike Flanagan and Leah Fong co-created The Midnight Club and executive produce with Trevor Macy, along with Julia Bicknell Pike. Flanagan also directed some episodes.

A shortlist has been announced for the £10,000 (about $12,455) Desmond Elliott Prize, which honors a debut novel written in English and published in the U.K. and Ireland. This year's shortlisted titles are:

Iron Annie by Luke Cassidy 
Keeping the House by Tice Cin
Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer 

In addition, Vida Adamczewski, Rachel Cleverly and Jasmine Farndon were shortlisted for the University of East Anglia's £4,000 (about $4,980) New Forms Award, for an innovative and daring new voice in fiction; and Alice Franklin, Kathy Hoyle and Cate West were shortlisted for the £4,000 Laura Kinsella Fellowship, recognizing an exceptional writer who has experienced limiting circumstances. All three winners will be revealed July 1.

photo: Huan He

Joseph Han is the recipient of a Kundiman Fellowship, and his writing has appeared in Nat. Brut, Catapult, Pleiades and Platypus Press's Shorts. He has a Ph.D. in English & Creative Writing from the University of Hawai'i-Mānoa and is an editor for the West region of Joyland magazine. Han's debut novel is Nuclear Family (Counterpoint Press, June 7, 2022), in which a Korean American family living in Hawai'i faces the fallout of their eldest son's attempt to run across the Demilitarized Zone into North Korea.

On your nightstand now:

I'm reading Shoko's Smile by Choi Eunyoung (translated by Sung Ryu) and Folklorn by Angela Mi Young Hur. Next up is Reprieve by James Han Mattson; Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost by David Hoon Kim; Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park (translated by Anton Hur); O Beautiful by Jung Yun; Imagine a Death by Janice Lee; and Beasts of a Little Land by Juhea Kim. Every year I look out for work by Korean and Korean American authors and writers of the Korean diaspora--and 2021 was quite exceptional.

Favorite book when you were a child:

A Korean children's book about a farting competition. My grandmother used to read it to me, and it was almost like a treat, considering how she often made me read through an illustrated children's bible. Of course, I gravitated more to the farting book. I thought it was the funniest thing, and I don't think I've ever laughed more with my grandmother than while reading that book together. It's a memory that certainly informs a part of my novel and my approach to why I write.

Your top five authors:

Immediately, I think of Alexander Chee, Danielle Evans, Bryan Washington, Yoon Choi and Brandon Taylor. But I must add five more: Kali Fajardo-Anstine, K-Ming Chang, Anthony Veasna So, Dantiel W. Moniz and Garth Greenwell. I could add more. This is an impossible question! I usually have, while writing, a rotating list of greats at the front of my mind, and I keep an altar of their books on my desk to flip through when I'm lost.

Book you've faked reading:

The many books of the Bible but, in particular, the Old Testament.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Skinship by Yoon Choi. The amount of times I gasped in awe while reading: this book is my sacred text, a book that recalibrated my heart, mind and eye. It's exquisite and masterful in scope; the Korean American short story is better than ever. Paul Yoon. Caroline Kim. Look out for Gina Chung and Jinwoo Chong; the future of Korean American literature is brighter than I could ever have imagined.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Books in the Animorphs series. Also bought them to flip through the corners.

Book you hid from your parents:

In elementary school, I exclusively borrowed every book in the Goosebumps series from the library and hid them in my backpack. The covers and stories were so gnarly, grotesque and absurd that I couldn't get enough. I read them in secret, knowing they would upset my religious grandmother. I was thrilled and scared on all accounts, though these books always paled in comparison to what I was made to learn about God's hell at church and home.

Book that changed your life:

Edinburgh by Alexander Chee. When I first read that novel, it unlocked me and the path forward.

Favorite line from a book:

"We perhaps depend too often on the faulty honor of silence... like some fault-ridden patch of ground that shakes and threatens a violence but then just falls in upon itself, cascading softly and evenly down its own private fissure until tightly filled up again." Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker was one of my first introductions to Korean American literature, alongside Alexander Chee and Nora Okja Keller. This passage struck me like lightning. It made me want to write. Shout-out to the greatest, Chang-rae Lee.

Five books you'll never part with:

Drifting House by Krys Lee; Once the Shore: Stories by Paul Yoon; If You Leave Me by Crystal Hana Kim; The Magical Language of Others by E.J. Koh; and How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee. These are a few of my landmark texts; without them I wouldn't be the writer I am today.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So. We were incoming Kundiman Fellows together. Though I didn't have the chance to meet him, Anthony's work will always elicit the feeling in me of being ignited and inspired, set ablaze from the discovery of why I love fiction as if that love were new. Every time I return to this book, I know I'll be remade.

Five books you've read recently:

The Fish & the Dove by Mary Kim-Arnold; Cleave by Tiana Nobile; Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung (translated by Anton Hur); Go Home, Ricky! by Gene Kwak; and Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin (translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins). Gene's writing impressed me endlessly, and we all need to read more poetry and literature in translation!

Michaela Goade's authorial debut, Berry Song, is a celebration of nature and an enchanting heritage story.

As Berry Song begins, the young Tlingit narrator is in a boat with her grandmother, who demonstrates skills for living off the land: "Together we pull hemlock branches from the salty ocean, heavy with herring eggs like tiny stars," and so on. Afterward they approach an island forest, where "the berries sing to us, glowing like little jewels." Their song--"Salmonberry, Cloudberry, Blueberry, Nagoonberry./ Huckleberry, Soapberry, Strawberry, Crowberry"--begets variations that become the book's refrain, with the names of other berries subbed in as girl and grandmother forage.

Throughout Berry Song, the narrator affirms the necessity of singing: as a way to thank the land for its generosity, to remind ancestors that they're not forgotten and to honor "the future, so that all will hear and all will know this beautiful berry song." When they're done foraging, the girl and her grandmother bring the berries home, where strawberry crisp and huckleberry pie are among the treats made from their spoils, for which the extended family gives thanks--"Gunalchéesh." Time passes--in winter, "the forest is dreaming, waiting for berry song"--until one day it's time for the narrator, an adolescent now, to bring her younger sister to the island.

Berry Song may strike young readers as not quite like any picture book they've seen before. Working in watercolor and mixed media, Caldecott medalist Goade (Encounter; We Are Water Protectors; I Sang You Down from the Stars) re-creates the majesty of what her author's note says is Alaska's Tongass National Forest. Pages are awash in vegetation, woodland creatures and both realistically proportioned and outsize berries. Goade balances her story's earthy and spiritual elements in dexterous visual experiments with light and shadow. In an astonishing image reinforcing the relationship of humans to the earth, the girl has what appears to be an ocean skirt, tree branch fingers and hair made of leaves, flowers and animals; as she says to her grandmother in the facing text, "The land is a part of us." --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author

Shelf Talker: In this majestic picture book, a Native girl and her grandmother sing their thanks to the land as they go berry picking in an island forest.