Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
The 2024 TikTok Award Winners
Since the biggest TikTok books sell hundreds of thousands of copies, one could argue that the cash is the prize of being a BookTok favorite. But apparently you can get a trophy too, as Rebecca Yarros did after Fourth Wing was named International Book of the Year (yes it was a 2023 release, book awards we need to speed things up). A panel came up with the finalists for the 82,000 voters to revert to the mean. The most interesting categories to me were for breakthrough author and the two creator awards.
Lewis Lapham, Giant of 20th Century Journalism, Dies
For a long time, I didn’t realize Lapham was a) a real person and b) still alive and thriving while I was first reading Harper’s 20 years ago. The name had a mythic quality to me (like Mencken or Ellison or Woolf) that I couldn’t quite believe was of the modern moment. Harper’s own notice of his life and passing exceed anything I could write here, but I will offer this one quote as tribute: “I know no other way out of what is both the maze of the eternal present and the prison of the self except with a string of words.”
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Why your local indie bookstore might not have Hillbilly Elegy in stock this week (or ever).
I do not envy the task of indie booksellers in moments like these. Where there is huge interest in a book (HarperCollins says more than 600,000 copies last week. Can that be right?!), but that book…well it sucks. On several levels. And yet, you have customers who want it and bills to pay. What do you do? The most common strategy seems to be to keep it off the shelves but take special orders. And I can understand why this feels a little better than having a stack of them ready to wrap. But is it all that different, really? Did one copy not find its way into the hands of a reader that it wouldn’t have? Are the dollars you forewent, crucial dollars as bestsellers are the bedrock on which most bookstores are built, really better for the world than JD Vance getting a couple of extra bucks (remember, a bookstore gets a bigger cut of the price of a book than the author does)? These aren’t rhetorical questions. I wonder about them mostly to help indie bookstores give themselves some grace in moments like these. Whatever strategy you choose probably feels compromised. And it probably is. And you are doing the best you can.
What is Going On With Book Sales?
On the most recent episode of First Edition, I am joined by Brenna Connor, Director & Industry Analyst for U.S. books sales for Circana. She has the goods: what is selling, what is trending, how retailers are doing, and much more. I learned a TON, and I bet you will too. I am tempted to drop some numbers here, but go listen and you can hear them. Curiosity gap, baby. You can find the episode here, or anywhere you get podcasts.