Booksellers’ picks of the year: international non-fiction

Canadian booksellers contacted by Q&Q say 2011 has been an especially strong year for international history and biography, with one book clearly taking the lead.

“The huge one would be the Steve Jobs title,” says Colin Holt, manager of Bolen Books in Victoria. Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson’s biography of Apple’s late co-founder and CEO, had its publication date moved up from 2012 after Jobs’s death in October. Indigo, Chapters, and Coles stores opened early on Oct. 24, the book’s release date, so Canadians could get their hands on a copy right away. Steve Jobs has since become a #1 bestseller.

In Toronto, Book City branches have already seen high sales of U.K.-born historian Niall Ferguson’s latest title, Civilization: The West and the Rest, a follow-up to Ferguson’s 2009 bestseller, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World.

At Nicholas Hoare’s Toronto location, books with buzz include Rome: A Cultural, Visual, and Personal History by Australian art critic Robert Hughes and Jerusalem: The Biography by British writer Simon Sebag Montefiore. Fiona McCarthy’s The Last Pre-Raphaelite, a biography of artist Edward Burne-Jones, and Franny Moyle’s Constance, chronicling the “tragic and scandalous” life of Oscar Wilde’s wife, are also top sellers.

Outside of history and biography, booksellers also pointed to Gully Wells’s memoir, The House in France, and Arguably, an essay collection by British-American writer Christopher Hitchens.

Indigo, Chapters, and Coles to open early for Steve Jobs bio

Indigo, Chapters, and Coles stores across Canada will open at 8 a.m. on Monday, Oct. 24, to accommodate readers who want to be the first to get their hands on the new Steve Jobs biography, written by Walter Isaacson and published by Simon & Schuster. The 656-page Steve Jobs, which lists for $36.99, will be available in-store for $25.

The reduced in-store price makes the hardcover book comparable to Indigo’s online price of $24.41. Amazon is selling pre-orders for $23.19, and in the U.S., Barnes & Noble is selling the book online for $17.88. Pre-orders for the e-book version are available for the Kindle ($20.72), Nook (U.S. $16.99), and through Apple’s iBookstore ($17.99), but there isn’t a listing for it yet in the Kobo bookstore.

Isaacson is scheduled to appear Sunday night on 60 Minutes, where he’ll play a portion of an audio tape of Jobs talking about his biological father. In this preview clip, Isaacson, who conducted more than 40 interviews with the Apple CEO, discusses Jobs’ refusal to be operated on after he was diagnosed for a second time with cancer. This revelation and others already leaked from the book, such as Jobs’ “intense battle with Google,” may convince a few more people to set their alarms early for Monday morning.

UPDATE: As of Oct. 24, Steve Jobs is now available on Kobo for $17.99.

Weekend reading list: top stories from around our offices

Every weekend Q&Q rounds up the highlights from other websites in the St. Joseph Media family. This week’s top stories include a tribute to Apple and plenty of Thanksgiving recipes.

Grace Kelly gets the royal treatment at TIFF Lightbox [Toronto Life]

The fashionable ways of Steve Jobs [Fashion Magazine]

Fifteen easy slow cooker recipes [Canadian Family]

Chloe Berlanga’s Tortillas de Patatas recipe [Ottawa Magazine]

Our 10 recommended record shops [Where Canada]

Seven Thanksgiving pies, crumbles, and crisps [20 Minute Supper Club]

DIY wedding ideas from cakes to centrepieces [Wedding Bells]

Hooded Fang makes some noise in the Toronto Public Library [Torontoist]

Book links roundup: Kobo expands, Bezmozgis racks up the raves, and more

Sundry links from around the Web:

• Deirdre Baker’s tribute to the life and work of fantasy author Diana Wynne Jones
• Kobo kicks off European expansion: e-book stores set to open in Spain and Germany in May, with France, Italy, and the Netherlands to follow
• The New York Times calls David Bezmozgis’s The Free World “self-assured, elegant, and perceptive”; read Q&Q‘s review
• Simon & Schuster confirms it will publish authorized Steve Jobs bio; iSteve: The Book of Jobs to appear in early 2012

Random House titles now available at U.S. iBookstore, not in Canada

At Wednesday’s launch of the iPad 2 in San Francisco, Apple CEO Steve Jobs confirmed that 17,000 titles from Random House U.S. will now be available in Apple’s iBookstore. Titles began appearing on the iBooks app prior to the press conference.

The partnership comes as no surprise after Random House announced that it was adopting Apple’s agency pricing model Monday — the last of the major U.S. publishing companies to do so. The pricing shift gives publishers 70 per cent of each sale, with a 30 per cent commission to retailers.

Random House Canada has no immediate plans to follow the U.S.’s lead. Senior vice president, director of marketing and corporate communications Tracey Turriff writes, “Random House of Canada’s digital terms of sale remain unchanged at this time. New commercial models in the fast changing eBook environment are constantly under review. We continue to evaluate our options and talk to all etailers as it is our mission to ensure that our authors’ books are available on all platforms to all potential customers. Our strategy is constantly evolving in the best interests both of our authors and consumers.”

Jobs said that since the iPad was launched in April 2010, customers have downloaded more than 100 million e-books from the iBookstore, with over 2,500 publishers represented.

The lighter, sleeker, faster iPad 2 will be available in Canada on March 25.

Daily book biz round-up: Yann Martel heads to Europe; Harry Potter heads to Orlando; and more

Scoops! Lots of ‘em!

• On the eve of Yann Martel’s European tour, the Guardian runs a not-so-nice account of the genesis of Beatrice and Virgil
• Meanwhile, Martel gets moral support from author of The Boy in Striped Pajamas
• Evaluating Canadian publishers’ websites
• Heather Reisman dons black robe, joins secret society of rich and powerful
• London mayor wants Harry Potter theme park to be built in his city, not in Orlando
  
• Steve Jobs unveils the iBookstore-ready iPhone 4
• Apple’s iBookstore sales numbers not particularly meaningful
• Forget about books on phones – now you can get books on vinyl!
• Joe Schuster Award-winners announced

Daily book biz round-up: how to edit a Summer Fiction issue; Glenn Beck makes incredibly bad book choice; and more

Some quick news hits to kick-start your week:

• The New Yorker editors on assembling the new Summer Fiction issue (plus Q&As with the “20 under 40″)
• Glenn Beck’s latest reading recommendation the work of a notorious anti-Semite
• Bret Easton Ellis: “I did not want to write a sequel to Less Than Zero.” (But he did)
• Steve Jobs on Apple’s “hell factory”: “[It's] pretty nice…. They’ve got restaurants and swimming pools”
• Wiley editors have high hopes for With Glowing Hearts
• Sonia Gandhi’s supporters angry about fictionalized take on her life; Gandhi herself remains mum

Steve Jobs to co-operate in authorized biography

While multiple unauthorized biographies have been written about Apple CEO Steve Jobs over the years, none have been written with the co-operation of the man himself – until now. A book that will finally get to the core of the tech guru’s life is currently in its early stages, according to The New York Times. The book will be written by Walter Isaacson, author and former managing editor of Time magazine.

From the Times:

Mr. Jobs, who will turn 55 on Feb. 24, has invited Mr. Isaacson to tour his childhood home, one person with knowledge of the discussion said.

[…]

Cooperation with Mr. Isaacson could be a sign that Mr. Jobs has emerged from his recent health battles with more of an interest in shaping his legacy.

Isaacson has written several biographies, including Einstein: His Life and Universe and Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. Last year, he also published American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane, a collection of essays on leaders and thinkers in recent history, including one about Microsoft mogul Bill Gates.