Amazon announced today that it has launched a “reimagined weekly bestseller list,” which they claim, unlike any of the many lists already available, is “A Bestseller List for What People are Really Reading and Buying.” They don’t point out that it is also unique in that it tracks only the books that people buy through Amazon.

There are two Amazon Charts, each divided between fiction and nonfiction. “Most Sold” tracks the top 20 books “sold and pre-ordered through Amazon.com, Audible.com and Amazon Books stores and books borrowed from Amazon’s subscription programs such as Kindle Unlimited, Audible.com, and Prime Reading.” A separate list, “Most Read,” claims to reveal which titles people actually read by tracking the “average number of daily Kindle readers and daily Audible listeners each week.” In Big Brother fashion, Amazon can also track Kindle titles according “to how quickly customers read a book from cover to cover,” noting which are literally “unputdownable.”

The goal, they say, is to help customers “discover their next great read,” but a look at the actual lists reveals that they offer precious little “discovery.” The majority of the 20 titles on each list are already fixtures on other best seller lists. The rest are published by Amazon’s own imprints (e.g., Lake Union Publishing, Thomas & Mercer, Montlake Romance) or are digital editions available on Kindle (e.g., four titles in the Harry Potter series published by Pottermore). And since Kindle sales and readership are included, the lists can be influenced by special promotions, such as those from Amazon itself and from BookBub.

More useful, as an early indicator of titles grabbing public interest, is the Amazon’s Movers and Shakers list, updated hourly.

Todd Haynes’s adaptation of Brian Selznick’s middle grade novel Wonderstruck (Scholastic, 2011) was screened this morning at the Cannes Film Festival, bringing mixed reactions. On the positive side, the AP writes, “The cacophony of the Cannes Film Festival was tamed Thursday by a deaf 14-year-old actress, Millicent Simmonds, whose screen debut is being hailed as a breakthrough.”

Describing the film itself, the AP calls it, “Fanciful and sentimental … an unlikely family-friendly turn for Haynes, the director of Far From Heaven and Mildred Pierce. But it doubles down on his fondness for period tales, weaving parallel story lines from 1927 and 1977.”

Variety‘s Chief Film Critic Owen Gleiberman is more subdued, saying the film is “a lovingly crafted adventure of innocence that winds up being less than the sum of its parts.” The Hollywood Reporter says the the screening drew merely a “polite burst of applause from the assembled press,” but adds the film “can be expected to be welcomed with a lot of warm reviews.”

Produced by Amazon Studios, Wonderstruck enters the Festival as concerns are heating up over changes in the way, as Variety puts it, “people are consuming content,” with particular animosity directed at Netflix, which has two films in competition that were originally scheduled to debut on the company’s streaming service, thus bypassing theaters (they have since changed that plan).

On the other hand, Amazon works in partnership with theatrical distributor Roadside Attractions, which will open Wonderstruck in limited release on October 20, but there is still concern about whether they will stick to that arrangement for future films.

Expressing his displeasure with Netflix at a press conference, Cannes jury president, Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, stated his position,

I’ll be fighting for one thing that I’m afraid the new generation is not aware of. It’s the capacity of the hypnosis of the large screen for the viewer. “The size [of the screen] should not be smaller than the chair on which you’re sitting. It should not be part of your everyday setting. You must feel small and humble in front of the image that’s here.

Actor Will Smith, also on the panel, basically said “good luck with that,” responding that his three children, “go to the movies twice a week and they watch Netflix. There’s very little cross between going to the cinema and watching what they watch on Netflix in my home.” Variety dryly notes, “Netflix, it just so happens, is the distributor of Smith’s next movie, the big-budget Bright, which opens this year.”

Amazon Studios, which were greeted at the Festival last year with open arms, are facing a chiller reception this year. Variety reports there was “a loud but isolated groan” when Amazon’s credit appeared on the screen during the showing of Wonderstruck.  Todd Haynes felt compelled to defend Amazon‘s commitment to theaters by asserting, “The film division at Amazon is made up of true cineastes who love movies and really want to try and provide opportunity for independent film visions to find their footing in a vastly shifting market.”

The controversy surrounding the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why, which some say “glamorizes” teen suicide, has brought new attention to the YA novel it is based on, one that has been challenged since it was published ten years ago.

Last night, Nightline showed another side of the story, reporting on a group of Michigan high school students who used the show as the inspiration to talk publicly about the events that made each of consider suicide, creating a video for their fellow students titled “13 Reasons Why Not.”

The result has been a dramatic change in the school’s culture, one that was deeply needed, says one of the participants in the project. As the book’s author Jay Asher has said, it is much more dangerous to try to shut down the conversation than to bring it into the open.

Time to crank up the betting on which actor will play Israeli art restorer, spy and assassin Gabriel Allon from Daniel Silva’s New York Times bestselling novels. Deadline reports that MGM Television, has bought the rights to the books.

Silva has published 16 titles in the series beginning with The Kill Artist in 2000, but says he’s been waiting for the “right time and the right partner” to adapt the books. The partner he chose is currently hot, having produced Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale and FX’s Fargo. As MGM Motion Pictures president Jonathan Glickman notes, the books have been hot for some time, saying bidding was “highly competitive” and the rights “have been sought after for years.”

The 17th title in the series, House of Spies will be published on July 17th (HarperCollins/Harper; HarperAudio; HarperLuxe)

Presidential aide Ivanka Trump’s Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success, (PRH/Portfolio; Penguin Audio/BOT) is technically a #1 best seller, having hit that number on the Wall Street Journal‘s Business Book list. Other numbers are not so sunny. It debuts on the USA Today general list at #53.

The Huffington Post reveals just how bad the sales are, reporting “In the book’s first five days on the market, Trump sold 10,445 print copies,” comparing that to Sheryl Sandberg’s book on female empowerment, Lean In, (PRH/Knopf) which sold 74,176 print copies in its first week, going on to sell many more and become a recognized catch phrase as well as a movement.

Reviews have been universally scathing. In this case, negative press may not be better than no press at all.

Both the movie poster, left, and a clip have been released for Todd Haynes’s Wonderstruck, based on Brian Selznick’s 2011 illustrated novel. The movie will debut at the Cannes Film Festival on May 18 and in US theaters in limited release on October 20, with the promise of a wide release sometime in mid-November.

The book, set in 1927 and 1977, features two deaf children, Ben and Rose, each within their own time line, each secretly longing for different lives. As the story unfolds, the tales of both children weave back and forth before finally coming together.

The film co-stars Julianne Moore and Michelle Williams. Oakes Fegley (Pete’s Dragon) plays Ben and newcomer Millicent Simmonds, who is deaf, plays Rose.

Selznick wrote the adapted screenplay. Below he describes how he wrote the novel:

Expect some creative film making to match the creativity of the novel. Movie Pilot writes “Rose’s half of the movie will be shot as a silent film! This will allow the movie to stay faithful to the novel, capture the world through the eyes of Rose, and recreate the aesthetic of the silent film era.”

Wonderstruck is the sixth film that Roadside has distributed with Amazon Studios. The two companies biggest success so far is Manchester by the Sea, which won two Oscars and was the biggest box office success to date for both companies.

The fight to keep theaters viable in an age of streaming services and high definition TV has led the Cannes Festival, like many film events, including the Oscars, to limit eligibility to movies  that are released to theaters before hitting small screens.

Things are becoming more complex now that streaming services have also gotten in to producing their own movies. Overturning their rule against streaming services sast year, Cannes accepted five of Amazon Studios films as entries into the competition, because Amazon execs “promised that, unlike Netflix, all of their films will go out in theaters, holding to the traditional 90-day theatrical window,” writes the Hollywood Reporter, adding that it makes business sense for Amazon,

“Unlike Netflix, which operates its streaming service in virtually every country in the world … Amazon’s Prime Video service is not available in France, in Italy, in Canada, Spain, Australia, Russia or Brazil. A global day-and-date rollout, the cornerstone of Netflix’ release strategy, still is impossible for Amazon.”

Read our chat with Gin Phillips, below.

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Co-authors James Patterson and his son Jack, sat down with CBS This Morning to discuss their first book together, released last week, Penguins of America, (Hachette/ Little, Brown).

Described as a “childrens book that illustrates the humorous connection between Penguins and humans,” the authors say the inspiration came from Jack’s obsession as a kid with seeing the world as if it were populated by penguins. Asked who the audience is, Patterson replies it will appeal to anyone “from 2 to 102. Kids are going to like it. They won’t get some of them, but they will get a lot of them. That’s the way kids are, they’re used to not getting everything, but they will love the illustrations.”

Asked about the novel he is currently working on with his latest collaborator, Bill Clinton, James Patterson says they are about “halfway through it.” Asked whether they will work on more books together, Patterson replies with a somewhat hopeful “Maybe.”

The announcement of the publication date of the new book by the author of The Martian, Andy Weir, set SF sites ablaze and the book rising on Amazon’s sales rankings.

Unsurprisingly, given the success of the adaptation of the author’s previous book, film rights have been acquired by the same team that produced that blockbuster adaptation.

Described as a “crime novel set on the moon,” the book is listed on wholesaler catalogs.

Artemis: A Novel
Andy Weir
PRH/Crown, November 14, 2017
Hardcover, 384 pages
$27.00 USD, $36.00 CAD
ISBN 9780553448122, 0553448129

Fan sites are doing hand springs over the first trailer for the film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel The Dark Tower released this morning.

“After what feels like ages, our first look at The Dark Tower is finally here—and it takes us into another world of death, destruction, and some very fancy gunwork from Idris Elba’s Roland the Gunslinger” writes the SF site io9.

The movie opens on August 4th.

New mass market paperback editions of the first four books in series were published in 2016, when the movie had an earlier release date. New tie-ins have been announced for Book One, The Gunslinger in several formats.

The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger
Stephen King, S&S
Trade Paperback , June 13, 2017
Mass Market, June 27, 2017
Hardcover, July 11, 2017

This month’s GalleyChat has now ended. Join us for the next one on Tues., June 6 – 4 to 5 p.m. ET (3:30 for virtual cocktails). Details here.

The new Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, Lisa Lucas has worked tirelessly, as she told PW last year, to “get the media to pay more attention to books.”

Profiled on today’s CBS This Morning, she spoke about the mission of the National Book Foundation to expand reading and her dream to make the foundation’s National Book Awards as eagerly anticipated as the Oscars or the Emmys.

Read our chat with Pablo, below.

Join us for the next live chat on May 26, 5 to 6 p.m., ET with Tamara Bundy, to discuss Walking with Miss Millie, to be published by Nancy Paulsen Books  in July.

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A new trailer for Sofia Coppola’s upcoming movie, The Beguiled has been released in advance of the Cannes Film Festival, where it has been entered into competition. Starring Nicole Kidman, Colin Farrell, Elle Fanning, and Kirsten Dunst, it is based on a 1966 Southern Gothic novel, A Painted Devil by Thomas Cullinan.

Set during the Civil War, the plot involves a group of women sequestered in a girls boarding school in the South, whose lives are turned upside down by the appearance of a wounded Union soldier. The movie is scheduled to debut in theaters on June 30th. Based on the trailer, IndieWire ventures that, “Coppola might just have the indie hit of the summer on her hands.”

Cullinan’s book was adapted before, also under the title The Beguiled.  Released in 1971, it starred Clint Eastwood and Geraldine Page. Considered a flop, it reportedly has developed a cult following since. The trailer for that movie works hard to attract audiences to the story of “a man who becomes prisoner to these man-deprived women, these man-eager girls.”

Coppola told Entertainment Weekly earlier this year that hers will be quite a different movie.  She shifts the focus away from he soldier to “the dynamics between a group of women all stuck together, and then also the power shifts between men and women.”

Little information is available about the 1966 novel, which has been out of print for 30 years. For the upcoming tie-in edition, the publisher quotes Stephen King from his book on horror novels and films, Danse Macabre, calling it “[A] mad gothic tale . . . The reader is mesmerized with horror by what goes on in that forgotten school for young ladies.” There are a few, mostly positive reviews on GoodReads, from film buffs who managed to snag out-of-print copies.

The Beguiled: A Novel (Movie Tie-In)
Thomas Cullinan
PRH/Penguin Books, Trade Paperback; OverDrive
On Sale Date: June 6, 2017