WNBA to recognize reading groups

WNBA to recognize reading groups

NEW YORK — The Women’s National Book Association is launching its second National Reading Group Month in October to promote reading groups and to celebrate the joy of shared reading.

Events featuring reading group favorite authors are being planned nationwide in the association’s nine chapters. Partners from all aspects of the book industry are joining in to support the launch. They include: HarperCollins Publishers; Hyperion Books; the Random House Publishing Group; Sasquatch Books; Simon & Schuster; and Susannah Greenberg Public Relations.

National Reading Group Month is endorsed by The Association of American Publishers, book group expo; The Book Report Network; The New Jersey Library Association and State Libraries of New Jersey; New York Center for Independent Publishing; and Reading Group Choices.

To learn more about the WNBA and its programs, visit www.wnba-books.org or www.NationalReadingGroupMonth.org.

’Brisingr’ sales magical

NEW YORK — First day sales in North America topped half a million for Christopher Paolini’s “Brisingr,” the third of his million-selling “Inheritance” fantasy cycle and unveiled last weekend with a Harry Potter-like midnight opening.

According to publisher Random House Children’s Books, “Brisingr” sold 550,000 copies in the first 24 hours, four times higher than “Eldest,” the second of Paolini’s planned four-book series. It was the highest opening ever for a Random House children’s book, but far below the 8.3 million copies in the United States alone for the launch of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” and the 1.3 million for Stephenie Meyer’s “Breaking Dawn,” released at midnight on Aug. 2.

Serena to serve up memoir

NEW YORK — A memoir by Serena Williams will be released in 2009 by Grand Central Publishing, which beat out a handful of other publishers bidding for the life story of the No. 1 ranked women’s tennis player.

Financial terms for the book, currently untitled, were not disclosed, although a publishing official with knowledge of the negotiations said bidding reached at least $1.3 million.

Williams, 26, has won nine Grand Slam titles and, with sister Venus Williams, won a gold medal in women’s doubles at the recent Olympics in Beijing.

Grand Central Publishing is a division of the Hachette Book Group.

Jackie, the editing years

NEW YORK — Jacqueline Kennedy’s years as a book editor, many of them at Doubleday, will be the subject of a Doubleday book coming out in 2011.

Historian William Kuhn, who has written about British royalty and politics, is writing a biography, currently untitled, about the years that Kennedy worked in the publishing business, starting in 1975 with a brief time at Viking Press and then her 16 years at Doubleday, right up to her death in 1994.

Kennedy’s authors ranged from celebrities Michael Jackson and Carly Simon to Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, the Egyptian novelist.

According to Doubleday, Kuhn will draw upon “previously untapped archival material” and has “conducted a series of interviews with her authors, collaborators and friends from the 1980s and 1990s.”

Bull market for books on economic disaster

NEW YORK — As the government worked on a plan to prevent a financial disaster, readers were seeking out books about economic crises — past, present and future.

One of several works getting a boost in sales is Kevin Phillips’ “Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism” (Viking), which sold 5,000 copies in the two days following Phillips’ appearance last week on the PBS television program, “Bill Moyers Journal.”

As of last Thursday, the book was No. 15 on Amazon.com’s best-seller list, followed by Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” at No. 20; and, at No. 23, “Snowball,” Alice Schroeder’s authorized biography of billionaire Warren Buffett. Other popular titles include Peter D. Schiff’s “Crash Proof,” David M. Smick’s “The World Is Curved” and a classic from decades ago, John Kenneth Galbraith’s “The Great Crash 1929.”

Penguin Press also announced that financial writer Roger Lowenstein is working on “Six Days That Shook the World,” a “probing look” at the past week’s events.

Vindicator staff/wire reports