The Book Report Network

FICTION CONTINUES ITS RISE AS READERS' GO-TO GENRE
By Carol Memmott and Anthony DeBarros 

Fiction — led by Kathyrn Stockett's The Help as the year's No. 1 seller — was 2011's go-to genre for the majority of book readers, analysis of data from USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list shows.

Choosing novels over non-fiction is a long-term trend; fiction has climbed from 67% of the titles in USA TODAY's weekly top 150 in 2007 to 78% last year.

And the reason the retiree sitting in the beach chair next to yours and the businesswoman relaxing in the airport lounge are reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo? We're craving that "Calgon, take me away" moment.

"People are interested in escape," says Carol Fitzgerald of the Book Report Network, websites for book discussions. "In a number of pages, the story will open, evolve and close, and a lot of what's going on in the world today is not like that. You've got this encapsulated escape that you can enjoy."

Read the full story on USAToday.com

New Weekly Newsletter Keeps Readers in Touch with New Releases

NEW YORK --- April 13, 2011 --- Bookreporter.com and Teenreads.com, two websites in TheBookReportNetwork.com have launched On Sale This Week Newsletters, alerting readers of the books that go on sale each week. The Bookreporter.com newsletter can be found here and the Teenreads.com newsletter can be found here.

Through May, these newsletters will be sent every other Tuesday; in June they will be sent weekly. Each newsletter will include an “On Sale This Week” section as well as a “Coming Soon” section that will list titles due to be published the following week. Each listing includes title, author, release date, imprint, ISBN and one sentence about the book.

“These newsletters evolved from our Coming Soon features, where we list books that will be published in the coming months. We feel that sharing this information with our readers will motivate them to explore and purchase books by their favorite authors --- and explore new ones,” said Carol Fitzgerald, President of TheBookReportNetwork.com. “The reaction from our readers to our initial mailing was wildly enthusiastic, confirming that this information is appreciated.”

The newsletter is printer friendly, which will assist librarians and booksellers, allowing them to post the list of newly released and coming soon titles on bulletin boards to alert their patrons, or to use the list when placing orders. Readers will find the printable list helpful when they go to bookstores, as it will assist them in finding the new titles that they are most interested in.

To view the most recent Bookreporter.com On Sale This Week Newsletter, click here: http://www.bookreporter.com/newsletters/on-sale-this-week/index.asp

For more information, or to sign up for the Bookreporter.com On Sale This Week Newsletter, click here: http://www.bookreporter.com/features/on-sale-this-week/index.asp

To view the most recent Teenreads.com On Sale This Week Newsletter, click here: http://www.teenreads.com/newsletters/on-sale-this-week/index.asp

For more information, or to sign up for the Teenreads.com On Sale This Week Newsletter, click here: http://www.teenreads.com/features/on-sale-this-week.asp About TheBookReportNetwork.com:
Bookreporter.com is part of TheBookReportNetwork.com (TBRN), a group of eight websites about books and authors that have become gathering places for a devoted community of more than 1.6 million booklovers since 1996. TBRN’s other sites include ReadingGroupGuides.com, GraphicNovelReporter.com, FaithfulReader.com, Teenreads.com, Kidsreads.com, AuthorsOnTheWeb.com and AuthorYellowPages.com, a searchable directory of author websites.

Teenreads.com Expands Ultimate Teen Reading List for Five-Year Anniversary

NEW YORK --- March 24, 2011 --- Teenreads.com, a website in TheBookReportNetwork.com, has updated its Ultimate Teen Reading List. The list includes nearly 400 titles, ranging from fiction to nonfiction that are recommended pleasure reading for teens aged 12-17. Twenty-one graphic novel and manga titles appear on the list this year, the first time this format has been spotlighted this heavily.

“We started the Ultimate Teen Reading List in 2006, as we noticed that many required reading lists were dated and we felt that they were not inspiring pleasure reading,” says Carol Fitzgerald, Founder of Teenreads.com and President of TheBookReportNetwork.com. “Our goal in creating this list was to get teen readers excited about reading by selecting books that would appeal to them. We hope that schools and libraries will adopt titles from our list to supplement their suggested or required reading lists.”

The Ultimate Teen Reading List features classics like George Orwell’s 1984 and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, but has been updated with newer titles such as Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver, and The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins.

Graphic novel and manga titles that have been added to the list include Fables by Bill Willingham, Watchmen by Alan Moore, and Stitches by David Small. Two books --- The Alchemist and Twilight --- are on the list in both prose and graphic novel formats. “On another website in TheBookReportNetwork.com, GraphicNovelReporter.com, we have seen graphic novels and manga being adopted into the school curriculum. Given that many educators are not familiar with the format, beyond The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman, which also appears on the list, we wanted to include these to ensure that there was a cultivated list of selections,” Fitzgerald said.

Teenreads.com compiled the list by incorporating suggestions from its more than 382,000 unique monthly readers as well as research by their staffers into what they felt were “must-reads” for teens. Books on the list include young adult titles like Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine, Stolen by Lucy Christopher and The Things a Brother Knows by Dana Reinhart, as well as adult titles that teens would enjoy such as Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford and Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard by Liz Murray.

For more information or to view all of the titles on the Teenreads.com Ultimate Teen Reading List please visit: http://teenreads.com/features/ultimate-reading-list.asp

About TheBookReportNetwork.com: TheBookReportNetwork.com (TBRN) is a group of eight websites about books and authors that have become gathering places for a devoted community of more than 1.6 million booklovers since 1996. TBRN’s other sites include flagship site, Bookreporter.com, ReadingGroupGuides.com, GraphicNovelReporter.com, Teenreads.com, Kidsreads.com, FaithfulReader.com, AuthorsOnTheWeb.com and AuthorYellowPages.com, a searchable directory of author websites.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
For More Information Contact:
Maureen Linehan
Maureen@bookreporter.com
212-246-3100

40% of Book Groups Reported Having Read The Help in 2010

NEW YORK --- March 21, 2011 --- ReadingGroupGuides.com, a website from TheBookReportNetwork.com has announced the Top 25 Book Group Discussion Books of 2010. Between mid-December and mid-February, book groups were asked to submit a list of the books that its members discussed in 2010. http://readinggroupguides.com/features/2010_year_end_selections.asp#top25, by Kathryn Stockett, was cited as the most read book, with 40% of the reporting groups noting that it was one of their discussion books.

The Top 25 Most Popular Reading Group Picks for 2010:
1. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
2. *The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
3. *The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
4. Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
5. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
6. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
7. Little Bee by Chris Cleave
8. A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick
9. The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
10. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
11. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
12. Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls
13. Still Alice by Lisa Genova
14. *Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
15. *The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
16. Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace… One School at a Time by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin
17. Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
18. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
19. *People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
20. *The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
21. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
22. South of Broad by Pat Conroy
23. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
24. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
25. The Postmistress by Sarah Blake

*An asterisk (*) indicates that the number of votes a book received is barely distinguishable from the book above it.

“The Help has been a mainstay on many bestseller lists for over a year now, and its appeal made it a must-read for book groups even in hardcover,” says Carol Fitzgerald, President of TheBookReportNetwork.com. “Also, it was nice to see To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, which celebrated its 50th Anniversary in 2010 on the list. We are certain that this was a re-read for many of the members of reporting book groups.”

A random drawing was held where all entrants were eligible to win a set of books for their book groups, which were contributed by publishers.

For an online link to the Top 25 titles read by reading groups in 2010, please visit:
http://readinggroupguides.com/features/2010_year_end_selections.asp

About TheBookReportNetwork.com:
Bookreporter.com is part of TheBookReportNetwork.com (TBRN), a group of eight websites about books and authors that have become gathering places for a devoted community of more than 1.6 million booklovers since 1996. TBRN’s other sites include ReadingGroupGuides.com, GraphicNovelReporter.com, FaithfulReader.com, Teenreads.com, Kidsreads.com, AuthorsOnTheWeb.com and AuthorYellowPages.com, a searchable directory of author websites.

Surprise Finding: Majority of Bookreporter.com’s Survey Respondents Read Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Series in Hardcover and Paperback, Not eBooks

NEW YORK – February 14, 2011 -- Bookreporter.com, a website in TheBookReportNetwork.com, has released the results of its recent Millennium Series Survey, in which they asked readers to answer questions about Stieg Larsson and his bestselling Millennium Series.

More than 1,700 readers participated in the survey. The most surprising statistic: While Stieg Larsson was the first author to become a member of the “Kindle Million Club,” 84% of readers who responded said they did not read the books on an eReading device. Of those that did read the series in eBook form, 9% read on a Kindle, 4% on Barnes & Noble’s Nook, 1% on a Sony eReader, 1% on an iPad and 1% on “other” reader/mobile devices.

In other results, it comes as no surprise that 71.8% of readers chose Lisbeth Salander as their favorite character in the series. Also earning top votes in the survey, the book that started it all, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO was chosen as favorite book in the series by 27.8%and favorite book cover by 36.4%, although 40% of readers liked all three book covers and could not decide on one favorite.

The popularity of the books has also sparked interest in Swedish tourism, with 44% of readers stating they are ready to pack their bags and visit the sights mentioned in the books, while 5% have already done so.

Regarding the page-to-screen adaptations, 43% have seen and enjoyed the Swedish film versions of the series, while 10% are waiting for the upcoming Hollywood film starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara.

“We were so pleased by the number of readers who took part in this survey, which is a testament to the cultural phenomenon that Stieg Larsson has created,” says Carol Fitzgerald, President of TheBookReportNetwork.com. “On Bookreporter.com we named the Millennium Series ‘The Series of The Decade,’ and THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST the ‘2010 Book of the Year.’ This survey is just part of our feature.”

For full coverage of Bookreporter.com’s “The Book of the Year…and The Series of the Decade” feature please click here: http://www.bookreporter.com/features/millennium-trilogy/index.asp



About TheBookReportNetwork.com: Bookreporter.com is part of TheBookReportNetwork.com (TBRN), a group of eight websites about books and authors that have become gathering places for a devoted community of more than 1.6 million booklovers since 1996. TBRN’s other sites include ReadingGroupGuides.com, GraphicNovelReporter.com, FaithfulReader.com, Teenreads.com, Kidsreads.com, AuthorsOnTheWeb.com and AuthorYellowPages.com, a searchable directory of author websites.


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
For More Information Contact:
Maureen Linehan
Maureen@bookreporter.com
212-246-3100

NEW YORK---October 1, 2010---The Book Report Network has announced plans to develop a book website for readers in college and twenty somethings. This website will have suggestions of books to read for personal pleasure, non-required reading. The expected launch date is early 2011.

"At this time, we are not seeing this key market of readers being served directly with a website edited especially for them," said Carol Fitzgerald, President of The Book Report Network. "As this project is still in the development stage, we are using the code name, "CO-20" as we move forward with plans for the site."

To help gather information about the target market for the new CO-20 site --- and to provide direction as to how the site might unfold --- The Book Report Network is conducting a survey of readers between the ages of 17 and 30. The CO-20 Survey is open until October 15, 2010, and anyone who completes the survey is eligible to enter a drawing to win one of 100 $25 gift cards to the bookstore of his or her choice.

Please note: Given customs and mailing restrictions, the prize offerings are only available to residents of the United States and Canada. International readers are welcome to participate, but will not be eligible to win a gift card.

For more information on The Book Report Network’s CO-20 survey, please follow this link, http://www.bookreporter.com/co-20/

About The Book Report Network: TheBookReportNetwork© is a group of eight websites featuring original content about books and authors. Since 1996, these sites --- led by flagship site Bookreporter.com, ReadingGroupGuides.com, GraphicNovelReporter.com, FaithfulReader.com, Teenreads.com and Kidsreads.com --- have become gathering places for a large and devoted audience of readers and book buyers. More than 1.6 million unique visitors come to the sites in the Network each month, making it the largest non-commercial group of book websites on the Internet.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
For More Information Contact:
Maureen Linehan
Maureen@bookreporter.com
212-246-3100

Libraries and Librarians Are Endangered Species: What You Can Do to Help

In April my mother called to say a cost-cutting move threatened to close my hometown's local library. The town council of Cedar Grove, New Jersey needed to trim the budget by $600,000, and by eliminating library funding council members thought they saw an easy cut. There were no unions to deal with, and the library line item in the budget of $490,000 for the remainder of 2010 was large enough that it could wipe out a huge chunk of the budget deficit. As one councilman noted, the surrounding towns had libraries; people could use those...

Continue reading the article on HuffingtonPost.com