Anderson’s will receive a $3,000 grant and Page and Palette and Brilliant Books will receive a $637 grant each (the population of Broken Wheel, IA).

Publisher’s Weekly announced the winners this morning, including Anderson’s plans for the grant! And Shelf Awareness (Anderson’s Picked as Readers Favorite Bookstore) told us about the matching grant that Brilliant Books is creating for seven Michigan school libraries – fantastic!

​Bookstores make such a difference in our lives and we couldn’t be happier to present grants to all three stores. Thank you so much to everyone who voted, the support and love for your bookstores is heartwarming. We think that Sara and all of Broken Wheel, IA would approve.

If you want a whirlwind of a life, then I recommend working as a salesperson for a book publisher’s gift division. Not only is it an amazing job, but twice a year, we have gift show season. For six to eight weeks in January/February and June to August, every customer you might want to see goes to all of the major gift shows to see what’s new—which means you get to spend six to eight weeks traveling around the country, showing off all the great books and gift products they’ll love.

​Such was my life for the past three weeks, attending as many gift shows as I could and meeting as many customers and readers as possible! 

​First stop:

Atlanta boasts the largest gift show and gift mart in the country.  If you are a gift customer or a supplier and you aren’t there, you are missing out. Trust me when I say I was there (Tuesday through Sunday)!

​Featured in the RPM Gifts and Greetings Showroom, my reps and I met with hundreds of people and talked books, wrote orders, and discussed future opportunities and titles.

…and touched base at the Sports Licensing and Tailgate Show. ​

This was a new show for my coworker, Peter Vanaria, and me, where we launched our new line of MLB activity books to a new type of customer—sporting goods stores!

​But while in Vegas, I made sure to visit our rep group California Marketing Association at one of the fast-growing gift marts, the Las Vegas Market.

Liz Otte

​National Accounts Manager—Gift and Regional

We were all saddened to hear of the passing of Hillel Black, our executive editor here at Sourcebooks for nearly 10 years.

Hillel’s impact on the company that Sourcebooks became cannot be understated. It was Hill’s deep love for authors that helped form a cornerstone for the sort of publishing company we sought to create. As the former publisher of Macmillan and editor-in-chief at William Morrow, he joined what was then a small publishing house trafficking entirely in nonfiction. Simply put, Hillel Black put us on the map.
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Indeed, Hillel is the reason we have both the Sourcebooks Landmark fiction imprint and a New York City office. Soon after he joined us in the year 2000, Hill was here in Naperville to visit and took Dominique out for dinner. I received a call at home that night from Dominique: “I think I just committed us to starting a fiction program,” she sheepishly told me. To be frank, it was a huge risk.

But Hillel would get it done, famously asking Dominique over sushi what kind of novels she’d like to publish. “Writers like Michael Malone,” she said. Hill being Hill located one of Michael’s old books, found the agent in the acknowledgments, and soon thereafter Sourcebooks Landmark was publishing Michael’s first new novel in more than a decade, placing it on the New York Times bestsellers list. As we’ve recently reported, Sourcebooks Landmark had its best year ever in 2015, and 2016 is off to a rollicking start. Hillel got it all off the ground and would be delighted.

Hillel’s care for books and authors was unparalleled, and his drive to find the next big book was never-ending. He was a mentor to me and to many others here. Several of us have been commiserating today about his phrases of wisdom that have become vocabulary around here – a “publishing prophet” is just one way of explaining his impact. Go for it, ask a long-timer, they’ll have a Hillel story to tell you.

​Most importantly, though, Hillel was a dear, dear friend. His was a kind and genuine soul. He will be missed. Our thoughts are with his family and friends.

Todd Stocke
VP Editorial Director