Bookbrowse News About Books, Authors, and Book-Related Topics

Tens of thousands of books are banned in US prisons, in an often arbitrary process that limits education opportunities.

On a Monday night, just after six, Alicia Williams waits for the last stragglers to take their seats in her cramped classroom at the Washington corrections center. Her students braved western Washington's fall weather to get here and they enter the room still ruffled from the wind, their khaki uniforms flecked with rain.

Hachette Book Group and Hachette UK have made promotions and structural changes designed "to meet consumer needs in all formats and fuel Hachette's growth in the U.K., the U.S., and international markets.

Simon & Schuster has bought VBK (Veen Bosch & Keuning), the largest publisher of adult and children's general-interest books in the Netherlands. The move marks S&S's first ownership of a foreign-language publisher and its first time owning a continental European publisher--and its first major move to expand internationally since it was bought by KKR and became a stand-alone company two years ago. The acquisition is subject to the regulatory review process required under Dutch law.

The Pulitzer Prize winners were announced Monday by the Pulitzer Prize Board. To see and read more about the winners, please visit our awards page.

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) this week announced the winners of the inaugural 2024 ACLS Open Access Book Prizes and Arcadia Open Access Publishing Awards. In the history category, Freedom Seekers: Escaping from Slavery in Restoration London by Simon P. Newman (University of London Press, 2022) took home the top honor. In a statement, the judges called the book a "well-argued, and effectively presented," exploration of "slavery's deeply embedded history in Britain and the Atlantic world."

At the Independent Book Publishers Association's Publishing University 2024 in Denver, whose theme was "Rise and Disrupt!," an April 27 roundtable addressed alternatives—or creative tweaks—to traditional publishing models. Introducing the panel, IBPA CEO Andrea Fleck-Nisbet questioned conventional measures of success. "Corporate publishers can operate on a model that allows for eight out of 10 books to be unprofitable," she said, noting that indies cannot afford the massive advances or high returns and make this model possible. "This traditional model is broken. It's bad for publishers, it's bad for authors, and it's bad for readers. But it doesn't have to be that way."

Paul Auster, the prolific novelist, memoirist and screenwriter who rose to fame in the 1980s with his postmodern reanimation of the noir novel and who endured to become one of the signature New York writers of his generation, died of complications from lung cancer at his home in Brooklyn on Tuesday evening. He was 77. You can view his author page at BookBrowse here.

At Publishing University 2024, held in Denver, the Independent Book Publishers Association announced that the IBPA Benjamin Franklin Book Awards, which honor titles in 57 categories, will be renamed the IBPA Book Awards and celebrate books across seven additional, identity-inclusive categories. IBPA also established a new Jan Nathan Lifetime Achievement Award, in memory of the late Publishers Marketing Association/IBPA founder, to recognize contributions to independent publishing by individuals and companies. IBPA CEO Andrea Fleck-Nisbet informed members of these updates on April 27, and a town hall will be held May 9 to discuss the rebranding.

British author Christopher John Sansom, author of the Shardlake series of crime novels under the pen name C.J. Sansom, died April 27, the Bookseller reported. He was 71. Sansom was awarded the Crime Writers' Association Cartier Diamond Dagger Award in 2022 for his outstanding contribution to the genre. You can view his author page at BookBrowse here.

The American Booksellers Association has filed a motion to intervene in the Federal Trade Commission's antitrust suit against Amazon, a move that the association said supports the FTC's case and "looks to bolster its claim that Amazon is guilty of unlawful exclusionary conduct by explicitly including the concerns of independent booksellers in the case."

The FTC and 17 state Attorneys General (now 18 after Vermont joined) filed the antitrust suit against Amazon last September, accusing the company of building and protecting a monopoly in various ways, including: forcing independent retailers on its online marketplace not to sell for lower prices elsewhere; favoring its own branded products over those from other retailers in searches; and requiring that retailers' products sold via Amazon Prime be handled and delivered by Amazon. The suit also said that many retailers have felt required to buy various Amazon services, including ads on its sites. In a statement at the time of the filing, the FTC called Amazon "a monopolist that uses a set of interlocking anticompetitive and unfair strategies to illegally maintain its monopoly power."