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Publishing Industry News: March 6, 2020

Curious about what’s happening in the world of books and publishing? Catch up on the biggest acquisitions, news, adaptations and more here!

• Celadon Books will release Jane Goodall’s next book, The Book of Hope, in fall 2021. The project is a collaboration with Doug Abrams, author of the best-selling The Book of Joy

The Book of Hope will serve as an extraordinary exploration of our very nature as human beings and offer a compelling path forward to create hope in our own lives and in the world,” Celadon’s announcement said.

• Literary nonprofit Latinx in Publishing has launched the Writers Mentorship Program, which is aimed at providing unpublished and/or unagented writers who identify as Latinx with professional mentorship opportunities.

• R.L. Stine – author of the popular Goosebumps series – will be publishing a middle-grade series based on the Topps Company’s Garbage Pail Kids. Stine has reached a three-book deal with publisher Abrams’ Children’s Books, beginning with Welcome to Smellville, which will be released this fall.

• Fewer than 48 hours after it was published, the first Yiddish edition of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone sold out. The first print run was 1,000 copies. A second edition is in the works.

• Independent publisher Riverdale Avenue Books has acquired the assets of Circlet Press, a small, independent press focused on science-fiction and fantasy works with sex-positive erotic themes.

• Best-selling adventure and thriller novelist – and real-life maritime explorer – Clive Cussler died Feb. 24. For more than four decades, he wrote or co-authored more than 80 books, including five perennial best-selling series, five nonfiction titles and several children’s books.

• The long list for the International Booker Prize – awarded every year to a single book that’s translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland – has been announced. Titles include Red Dog, The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree, The Adventures of China Iron, The Other Name: Septology I-II, The Eighth Life, Serotonin, Tyll, Hurricane Season, The Memory Police, Faces on the Tip of My Tongue, Little Eyes, The Discomfort of Evening and Mac and His Problem.

• Former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh, who held elected offices in Baltimore for two decades, was sentenced to three years in federal prison for a fraud scheme involving a children’s book series. 

Pugh entered into a no-bid deal with the University of Maryland Medical System – where she sat on the board of directors – to buy 100,000 copies of her self-published book, Healthy Holly, for $500,000. She later resigned from the board and as mayor amid investigations in her finances. 

Through the sentencing, Pugh must pay restitution of $400,000 to the medical system and nearly $12,000 to the Maryland Auto Insurance Fund, which also bought her books. She will forfeit nearly $670,000, including her Ashburton home and $17,800 in her campaign account. Pugh also agreed that all of her copies of Healthy Holly books – collected by the FBI in raids on her houses and offices – will be destroyed.