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New Sally Rooney Novel Coming this Fall
Add a AAA title to the fall publishing calendar: FSG will publish Sally Rooney’s fourth novel, Intermezzo, on September 24th. FSG president said this about it in a statement to PW: “Two men, three women—two brothers and the women they love.” That sounds like a Sally Rooney novel to me.
Butterfly in the Sky
A feature-length documentary about the making of Reading Rainbow called Butterfly in the Sky will be released in theaters in New York and other select cities on March 17th. The de facto release date for the rest of us is April 30th, when it will be available on VOD. Burton and Reading Rainbow haven’t had the coziest relationship over the last few years, and it looks like this one isn’t going to just be a hagiography of a beloved show. Looking forward to this.
Where is the Diversity In Publishing?
Lee & Low has released the results of its most recent survey of diversity in the publishing industry. More than 24,000 surveys went out to to employees at publishers of all shapes and sizes in North America (and got a response rate of 36%). It’s worth looking at the whole set of results, but I will pull one number here: 72.5% of the respondents identified as white. Two (at least) interesting points of comparison. First, in Lee & Low’s 2015 survey, 79% of respondents identified as white. The closest comparable metric in the 2020 census had 75.5% of respondents responding as White, alone (the census has a little wrinkle in the White, alone stats that is tough to map directly on to the Lee & Low numbers). Looks like there has been real enough change in the publishing industry that it at least is no whiter, and perhaps even a bit less white, that the U.S. itself.
