HBG Big News This Week: March 25-29, 2019

Following is a recap of major news at Hachette Book Group for the week of March 25-29, 2019:

Bestseller news: Harlan Coben’s Run Away (GCP) debuts this week at #2 on the Print Hardcover Fiction and Combined P&E bestseller lists and at #2 on the USA Today bestseller list. Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman (Back Bay) debuts at #10 on the Paperback Nonfiction bestsellers list. And our March selection for Hachette Reads, Internment by Samira Ahmed, makes its debut on the NYT Children’s bestseller (YA Hardcover) list at #4. HBG’s distribution clients have five books on the New York Times list this week.

Major launch: Susan Page’s The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty (Twelve) goes on sale next week, riding a wave of intense interest sparked by the cover excerpt in USA Today this week, which was picked up extensively – on the Today show, Washington Post, Axios AM, Newsweek, network news sites (Fox, CBS, ABC), Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and more – and resulted in “Barbara Bush” trending on Twitter. Author Susan Page will make appearances on national media including interviews on CBS This Morning and Face the Nation; FOX’s FOX & Friends, The Daily Briefing with Dana Perino, Martha MacCallum, Mornings with Maria, and Bret Baier; MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Chris Matthews, Andrea Mitchell, and Brian Williams; BBC America’s World News with Katty Kay, CNN’s New Day, and PBS Newshour. Reviews are forthcoming in USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Dallas Morning News, Washington Post, Washingtonian, and the Daily Beast. 

Media blitz: Rick Reilly’s Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump (Hachette Books) goes on sale next week with an impressive media rollout – first serial in Esquire and second serial in PoliticoMagazine, interviews on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and Deadline: White House w/Nicole Wallace; CNN’s New Day and CNN Tonight w/Don Lemon; Sirius XM’s Ask Me Anything with John Fugelsang, Mad Dog,and Craig Shoemacher; FOX Sports Radio w/ Doug Gottlieb, Chris Broussard and Rob Parker Show; feature interviews in Rolling Stone, Politico, Golf Magazine, Newsweek, Washington Post, and New York Post; and reviews coming in the New Yorker, Washingtonian, and New York Review of Books.

James Beard Awards: PublicAffairs author Geraldine DeRuiter (All Over the Place: Adventures in Travel, True Love, and Petty Theft, paperback OSD 7/16/19) has been nominated for a James Beard Foundation Journalism Award in the “Personal Essay, Long Form” category for her essay “I Made the Pizza Cinnamon Rolls from Mario Batali’s Sexual Misconduct Apology Letter.” You can read Geraldine’s hilarious, pitch-perfect essay here. And Little, Brown’s Milk Street: Tuesday Nights by Christopher Kimball received a nomination in the General Books category. The full list of nominees is here, winners will be announced on April 26.