HarperCollins India is celebrating 25 years in the country. The brand has kicked off celebrations by launching a digital campaign that celebrates books. The campaign includes a two-and-a-half minute film. The parent brand HarperCollins will complete 200 years this year.
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books
Patna Book Fair will be held from February 4 to 14. There will be around 600 stalls at the fair which will be held on Gandhi Maidan. The theme this year is ‘Skilled youth, progressive Bihar’. Essay and painting competitions, debates and speech contests, especially for schoolchildren, will also be conducted on the sidelines. Some of the attendees this year include renowned writers and poets like Udai Prakash, Narendra Kohli, Bhagwan Das Morwal, Vandana Ram, Tuheen Sinha, Rakhi Bakshi and Musafir Baitha. The fair was first held 32 years ago.
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macmillan
Pan Macmillan has promoted editorial directors Francesca Main and Trish Jackson as part of expansion plans in its commercial and literary fiction programmes. Main, previously editorial director at Picador, has been promoted as Picador publishing director, while Jackson, editorial director at Pan Macmillan, has been promoted as fiction publishing director. In 2016, Pan Macmillan’s sales were up almost 27% to £77.7 million.
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coffee
A Kyodo News report in The Japan Times reports that Tsutaya Company, one of Japan’s major entertainment and bookstore chains, opened its first book café in Taiwan on January 24. Located in Taipei’s Xinyi commercial district, the Tsutaya Bookstore is designed to offer a new environment in which people can enjoy books while sipping coffee, company officials say. This is the first time that Tsutaya has opened a book cafe outside of Japan. Shjuiro Kusomoto, president of Café Company, says, “Like the Chinese who chat with their books over tea, we’d like to bond with our Taiwanese friends with coffee in an environment where they can hang out and enjoy a new, leisurely lifestyle.”
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Ben Brusey, an editorial director at publishing imprint Century, has been promoted to deputy publisher. Brusey was instrumental in acquiring astronaut Tim Peake’s book, Hello, is this Planet Earth?. Brusey will be in charge of strategy and publishing of non-fiction, and will continue to report to Century and Arrow publisher Selina Walker. Prior to joining Century in 2015, Brusey worked as an editor at Viking.
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Berlinale
Titles from Belgium, Brazil, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, and the U.K. have been selected from more than 130 initial entries in this year’s Books at Berlinale competition. Books at Berlinale is a collaboration between the Frankfurt Book Fair (October 11-15) and the Berlin International Film Festival (this year from February 9 to 19). The programme brings together literature and cinema. Books at Berlinale sends out an open call for applications every year. Publishers and literary agents apply by submitting novels they believe have potential for film adaptations. This year, the field of entries comprised material from some 30 countries.
