What the Indies are Ordering For The Summer

Edelweiss, the company that creates electronic catalogs used by publishers reps to sell to independent booksellers, recently released a list of the top 30 most-ordered nonfiction titles, published before Aug 1.

Indies are on the lookout for titles they can handsell to their customers, so what they order is of particular interest (one caveat, however, only the publishers that use the Edelweiss system are included. While the majority of the larger publishers do so, there are a few exceptions, most notably, Simon and Schuster).

Some highlights from the list:

At number one is Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts (Random House/Crown, 5/10). The next book after the author’s best selling The Devil in the White City (sadly, the movie of that title, which once boasted Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead, is now listed by Variety as a  one of “…a bounty of scripts based on bestsellers and cult classics collecting dust at every studio”). In the new book, Larson again explores an influential era of history through the eyes of a few players, in this case, the American ambassador to Germany and his family in Berlin during Hitler’s early years.

 

The #5 title, Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff arrives today. The true WWII story of two servicemen and a WAC who survived an airplane crash in New Guinea, arrives with enthusiastic pre-pub reviews and drew comparisons to Unbroken by GalleyChat readers.

 

 

 

At #26 is a title many librarians fell in love with at ALA MidWinter, The Reading Promise by Alice Ozma, (Hachette/Grand Central Publishing, 5/3). The 22-year-old author is a passionate advocate of reading. Fortunately, for those who didn’t attend, there is a video of the event (see below).

Prepub reviews are strong; it  even touched Kirkus‘s famously cold heart, “A warm memoir and a gentle nudge to parents about the importance of books, quality time and reading to children.” It’s also on the IndieBound Next List for May.

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