We are saddened to hear the news that Peter Workman died yesterday. He was the founder and CEO of Workman Publishing, a successful company built on unique, often quirky titles. In addition, he was a vital part of several charities, including the Goddard-Riverside Community Center, an organization that works for social and economic change for the poor in West Harlem and the Upper West side, Prep for Prep, which works with New York City’s students of color to give them better educational opportunities and the UJA.

Peter was known for being very hands-on and as a result, a Workman title is always recognizable. The companies that Workman acquired over the years are also unique and have retained their own identities; Algonquin, Black Dog & Leventhal, Highbridge Audio, Storey Publishing and Timber Press.

In the midst of corporate consolidation in publishing, Workman has remained steadfastly independent. The company will continue to be run by Peter’s wife and business partner, Carolan Workman, their daughter Katie Workman and a small management team of people from within the company.

After the publisher-supported site Bookish.com delayed its summer, 2011 launch date  and changed management several times, many in the book business wondered if it would ever arrive. Just as rumors had begun to die down, the site launched last night.

Aimed at consumers, it’s a Johnny-come-lately to online book merchandising. As Ron Charles of the Washington Post notes with tongue-in-cheek, “If you’re one of the countless people wondering, ‘Why isn’t there anywhere to buy books online?’ we’ve got good news: Bookish went live last night.” The press release offers details on what is billed as a “one-stop, comprehensive online destination designed to connect readers with books and authors.

The site is sponsored by publishers Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group and Penguin Group, with participation from 16 other publishers.

Users can buy books directly from Bookish, with B&T handling fulfillment. There are also links to online retailers, including ABA’s IndieBound.

The site will include author interviews (a conversation between Michael Koryta and Michael Connelly is currently featured), book excerpts and reviews.

It also aims to provide a “state- of-the-art recommendation tool…from a proprietary algorithm that factors in editorial themes, professional and consumer reviews, publishing house editor insights, awards and more.”

At this point, it’s not working that well. Entering The Power Trip by Jackie Collins brings up the following results. Hemingway might be pleased with the comparison.

In a statement yesterday, St. Martin’s Press defended The Raven’s Bride by Lenore Hart, which they published in February of this year, from accusations that it plagiarizes passages from Cothburn O’Neal’s 1956 novel, The Very Young Mrs. Poe. They said that any similarities are a result of the fact that both novels are about Edgar Allan Poe’s child bride, Virginia Clemm (via the Associated Press). WorldCat shows that nearly 500 libraries own The Raven’s Bride.

Questions about the two books were raised by British author Jeremy Duns on his blog last month.

Earlier in November, Duns pointed out similarites between Q.R. Markham’s Assassin of Secrets and several other titles, resulting in that book being pulled by Little, Brown a few days after publication. That action was taken before most libraries had received it, so it is available only a few. The New Yorker’s “Book Bench” blog points out that Assassin of Secrets lifts so many passages from other sources that the book is more of a “pastiche or collage, rather than a ‘novel,’ as we properly understand the word” and that Q.R. Markham (the pseudonym for Quentin Rowan), who is a poet and part owner of a bookstore in Williamsburg, a section of Brooklyn, may have consciously perpetrated an elaborate hoax. Markham, himself, blames his actions on his need “to conceal my own voice with the armour of someone else’s words.”

There may be one lesson in the earlier case; the attention caused the book’s sales to skyrocket prior to it being recalled.

After OverDrive’s announcement that Penguin had decided to restore access to older titles for library lending via Kindle, Penguin released a statement that this will only be in effect through the end of the year, unless concerns about unnamed security issues are resolved (see last line)

Penguin USA took the decision yesterday [11/22] to withhold the supply of new digital titles from suppliers to US libraries until concerns about the security of the copyright of its authors have been resolved.

In addition, Penguin informed suppliers to libraries that it expected them to abide by existing agreements to offer older digital titles to libraries only if those files were held behind the firewalls of the suppliers.

Following receipt of this information, Overdrive, a supplier of ebooks to US libraries, removed “Get for Kindle” from its offering.

Penguin has subsequently been informed by Amazon that it had not been consulted by Overdrive about the terms of Penguin’s agreement with Overdrive. Amazon has undertaken to work with Penguin and Overdrive between now and the end of the year to address Penguin’s concerns. Penguin will, as a result, restore the supply of these titles until the end of the year in order to return the availability of older titles to all its digital customers.

Independent publisher Quirk Books, inventors of the mashup genre, are profiled in a story by the Associated Press, “Philly book publisher the BRAAAINS! behind phenom.”

Why publish books like Pride, Prejudice and Zombies?  ”It was simply too crazy not to,” says founder David Borgenicht.

The company’s most recent title in the genre is Night of the Living Trekkies, about zombies at a Star Trek convention. More mashups are coming and a  ”sci-fi slash political satire” book is being planned for the 2012 presidential election.

Night of the Living Trekkies Kevin David Anderson, Sam Stall Retail Price: $14.95 Paperback: 256 pages Publisher: Quirk Books – (2010-07-28) ISBN / EAN: 1594744637 / 9781594744631

A few posts ago, I mentioned that S&S is doing a publisher preview for their adult imprints. Unfortunately, I got the date wrong — it’s Friday, September 24th  from 9 to 12:30 at the S&S offices in NYC (email Michelle Fadlalla to RSVP or for more information).

Such a deal; you get breakfast, a chance to hear S&S editors talk about the books they are passionate about, and to hear from National Book Award winner Carlos Eire about his new book, Learning to Die in Miami: Confessions of a Refugee Boy (Free Press, Nov. 2, 2010), not to mention the opportunity to mingle with area colleagues.

Also, save the date for the AAP Fall Buzz Event for Tri-State area on Wednesday, October 20^th (don’t worry; I double-checked that date!); more details later.

And, if you’re not in the tri-state area, remember that you can get the HarperCollins Buzz — Fall 2010 right on your desktop.

Check out the warning section about the side effects of reading from this promo for  Unbridled Books:

If you enjoy it, be sure to also check out their books on the Unbridled web site.

This is clever; Frommer’s is running a photo contest. The winner will have his or her photo featured on the cover of a Frommer’s book and will win $5,000 (contest ends 3/31).

How appropriate it would be if a librarian won, given what great travelers we are and how many Frommer’s titles libraries buy.

I’m no photographer, but just looking at the hundreds of photos that have already been entered serves as a mini-vacation.

There’s a book giveaway hidden in our top banner ad this week; if you click on it, you can enter to win five titles that fit in to YALSA Teen Read Week’s “Beyond Reality” theme. It’s part of Random House’s library marketing department’s “Shelf Help;” collection development “cheat sheets” aimed at helping librarians make sure they own essential titles in popular subject categories.

Many of you are already savvy to publisher’s library marketing departments. If not, you can think of them as your entry-way to publishing houses. They are happy to answer questions from when Nevada Barr’s next book is coming to how to get an author to speak at your One Community program (by the way, Random House has just created a new One Book guide with tips from the mother of all one-book programs, Nancy Pearl).

On EarlyWord, we maintain an up-to-date directory of library contacts for adult books at the various publishing house,s as well as links to their librarian newsletters, blogs, and even, in HarperCollins case, an online radio show for librarians.

Through the AAP, library marketing staff also organize various events for librarians at the BEA, ALA and PLA. This week, they are presenting their first “Librarians’ Spring 2010 Sneak Preview” here in New York.

Get to know these people; they are a key component in the publisher/librarian connection.

Sterling publishers is celebrating 60 years in the business by offering libraries a chance to win 60 of their books.

Entries must be in by July 24th. For more information, click here.

Library Marketing Director Chris Vaccari demonstrates just how many books that is:

Those clever guys at Unshelved may have just topped themselves. For BEA, they’ve put together “Publisher Confidential,” an ebooklet of pet peeves from librarians, booksellers and readers.

Such as:

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For more on the project, check the Unshelved blog.

Reminder: if you don’t suffer from the above problem and are actually looking for catalogs, you can get PDF’s of publishers catalogs from our links to the right (under “Download Publishers Catalogs”).

Publishers catalogs for April through August are beginning to arrive. To see the new ones we’ve posted, go to Publishers Catalogs — Spring/Summer ‘09.

Also, you can find current catalogs at the right, under “Download Publishers Catalogs.”

• Paperback:$18.00
• Publisher: Busted Flush Press, (December 3, 2007)
• ISBN-10: 0976715732
• ISBN-13: 978-0976715733

On Friday, the Houston Chronicle profiled a tiny (a one-man house, you can’t get much smaller than that) independent press that has just received its second Edgar nomination for Best Short Story. The goal of Busted Flush (named after Travis McGee’s houseboat in the series by John D. MacDonald) is to bring back out-of-print mysteries and to publish anthologies of mystery short stories.

The nominated story is “Uncle,” by Daniel Woodrell, which appeared in A Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir.

In 2007, Bill Crider’s “Cranked,” from the anthology Damn Near Dead was nominated.

Ever wonder why publishers keep creating new imprints and what their names signify?

Earlier this week, NPR’s All Things Considered took a look at Twelve, an imprint launched last year by Grand Central (formerly Warner Books, part of Hachette, which was formerly Time Warner Book Group). It’s worth listening to the piece (don’t rely on the overview; it manages to miss the best bits) for insights on the publishing process.

It’s useful to get to know imprints and their characteristics. To see how an independent bookstore buyer uses such knowledge, check out this post on the blog “Kash’s Corner.”

As NPR points out, Twelve has had a remarkable ability to publish bestsellers (6 out of 9 of the titles they’ve released became bestsellers. By contrast, NPR says the industry average is one book in ten becoming a hit. I think that figure is high).

NPR also quotes the Bowker statistic of 290,000 new titles published a year. I always grind my teeth when I hear this figure quoted. It includes on-demand titles, every new edition, technical manuals, and titles from extremely small publishers (83,000 publishers are represented). A large percentage of those titles will never reach the radar of bookstores and public libraries. My own guess (which I checked out with some knowledgeable industry observers, so it’s not completely out of thin air) is that the number of commercially viable titles is more like 30,000 to 50,000 each year.

NPR also featured a Twelve title that’s about to be released:

Fortune Cookie Chronicles by Jennifer 8. Lee

• Hardcover: $24.99
• Publisher: Twelve (March 3, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0446580074
• ISBN-13: 978-0446580076

It received a starred review (a “delightful first book on the origins of the customary after-Chinese-dinner treat by New York Times reporter Lee…There are satisfying minihistories on the relationship between Jews and Chinese food and a biography of the real General Tso”) in Publishers Weekly, 12/3/07. the author was also interviewed in PW (but no explanation of her middle initial).

Twelve’s Web site announces titles through August, and also lists those coming in the more distant future, from authors such as Christopher Buckley, Po Bronson and Ted Kennedy.