Indie booksellers can apply for new pandemic aid

Independent booksellers and comics shops hurt by the pandemic may get some financial help, from an initiative announced Wednesday.

The Survive to Thrive program aims to make grants of up to $10,000 to as many as 200 stores, said Pam French, executive director of the project administrator, the Book Industry Charitable Foundation. That dollar amount was reached through discussions with booksellers, who said it was enough to make “a significant difference,” reported Publishers Weekly. Criteria are in the works. Organizers expect to start taking applications in mid-April, with disbursal by early June; the number of grants will depend on fundraising, PW said.

The project was started by Ingram Content Group which, with its charity arm, gave $500,000. Bookshop.org gave $250,000; Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Macmillan and Penguin Random House together gave $250,000. The goal is for $2 million. Details: www.bincfoundation.org.

It’s been a busy week. Consolidations: HarperCollins, a Big Five U.S. publisher, is buying the trade book division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. (Loosely, trade books are softcovers that are larger and printed on better paper than “mass market” paperbacks.)

The deal lets HarperCollins, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., better compete against other big players. “Some analysts have warned that within a decade or so, the industry may be left with only two big publishing companies — Penguin Random House and HarperCollins,” the second-largest trade publisher, The New York Times reported. … Passings: Beverly Cleary, who enthralled kids with her feisty, not syrupy, characters, was 104, and Larry McMurtry, who refused to romanticize the American West he loved, was 84; they died March 25. Joan Walsh Anglund, a poet and prolific children’s author (“A Friend Is Someone Who Likes You”), died March 9 at age 95. … Endings: Scholastic stopped distributing a 2010 Captain Underpants book by Dav Pilkey, “The Adventures of Ook and Gluk,” in which two cavemen time-travel and meet a martial arts instructor named Master Wong. Pilkey apologized for its “harmful racial stereotypes” and imagery, The Guardian reported.

Awards season continues. National Book Critics Circle awards include, fiction, to Maggie O’Farrell for “Hamnet.” Nonfiction, Tom Zoellner for “Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire.” Autobiography, Cathy Park Hong for “Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning.” Biography, Amy Stanley for “Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World.” Poetry, Francine J. Harris for “Here Is the Sweet Hand.” FIrst book, Raven Leilani for “Luster.”

For excellence in reviewing, Jo Livingstone of the New Republic. For lifetime achievement, the Feminist Press; its authors include Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Anita Hill, Grace

Paley, Barbara Ehrenreich and members of punk band Pussy Riot. (NYT)