People
Maureen O’Neal has left Ballantine and can be reached by email at mrnoneal@aol.com. Elizabeth Dyssegaard is also leaving at the end of the summer.
Katherine Beitner to HarperCollins as Associate Publishing Director. She was Director of Publicity for Harmony and Shaye Areheart Books.
In children’s books there is more movement: Last month Diana Blough left Random House Children’s, where she was Director of Marketing, for the same position at Bloomsbury. She has hired Debra Shapiro as Senior Publicity Manager. Shapiro was Publicity Manager at Holt children’s. Marketing Director Sharon Hancock has also left Holt’s children’s division to be Executive Marketing Director at Candlewick. … Kenn Goin has gone to the Korean-based children’s publisher Bearport — a translation of Woongjin into English — as President and Publisher. He was Editorial Director at Learning Horizons, part of American Greetings. Finally, Jackie Carter has been named VP, Publisher — Children’s Press & Franklin Watts. She was previously at Disney and will join Scholastic as of September 7.
Joyce Stein is joining Hylas Publishing as Director of Marketing and Public Relations. She was most recently with Kingfisher. … PW reports that Gene Brissie, most recently President of the James Peter Associates Agency, has been named Editor-in-Chief of Kensington’s Citadel Press.
Speaking of agencies, two new literary agencies are joining the fray: Mary Hall Mayer has formed The Hall Agency, which represents literary and licensing projects. The address: 69 Fifth Avenue, 11th floor, NY 10003. Tel: (212) 675-6259 or email maryhallmayer@aol.com. Larry Weissman recently launched the eponymous agency and may be reached at larryweissman@earthlink.net. … Manie Baron is leaving William Morris and may be reached at manie@nyc.rr.com.
Jake Morrissey returns to book publishing from the licensing world (he worked for United Media, after stints at Harmony and Scribner), as Executive Editor of Riverhead. … Andrew Mandel will join FSG as EVP and Deputy Publisher on September 20. He was General Manager at Workman and before that, was at HarperCollins. Workman does not plan to fill the position at this time.
Adrian Sington, previously with E-Substance and Macmillan/Boxtree, has acquired a minority shareholding in Virgin Books and is joining as Executive Chairman of the board. Ray Brash has also joined the company as COO from The Economist Intelligence Unit, where he was Finance Director. KT Forster remains as Managing Director.
Randy Charles, SVP of Customer Relationship Marketing since February 2003 is leaving the company. His position will not be filled, but Bill Ostroff, who comes from EMI and to whom he reported, will oversee this area. He is President, Rodale Interactive, and Chief Marketing Officer.
Ron Longe has been appointed Director of Publicity at Stewart, Tabori & Chang. He was previously Director of Marketing and Publicity for Routledge, and has worked in publicity at Viking Penguin, HarperCollins, and St. Martin’s.
Brenda Segel has two new people in the Rights Department. Margaret Pai joins HarperCollins from Bulfinch, and was previously at Little, Brown, Macmillan and Knopf. Sandy Bontemps Hodgman joins HarperCollins from the Kathy Robbins Agency.
Last month all the publicity jobs changed hands. This month, it’s the sales departments’ turn:
Jack Perry has left SourceBooks and Sean Murray has been promoted to National Sales Manager Trade Group. . . . At Little Brown the sales department hired Celeste Risko, formerly a buyer at Borders, as National Accounts Manager to replace Jennifer O’Donohue, who went to Penguin. … Pamela Smith has been named VP, Sales for Ingram Library Services. She was previously Chief Marketing Officer at Baker & Taylor. … Sharon Huerta joins Abrams as Trade Sales Manager. She was most recently a Special Sales Representative at Penguin Putnam. … PGW’s Kim Wylie announces the hiring of Sue Ostfield as National Accounts Director in NY, replacing Kevin Votel as he leaves to becoming VP, Marketing for PGW in California. Ostfield comes from Holt where she was Associate Director of National Accounts. … Pat Rozell has left Motorbooks where she was Trade Sales Manager, to go to Readers Digest.
At Quarto, Richard Green has been hired as Publisher of Marshall Editions. He was head of publishing for Children’s Learning at BBC Worldwide.
Phaidon Press announced that Chris North has become MD, working out of its London headquarters. North was most recently at HarperCollins, first in New York and later in Toronto as COO of HarperCollins Canada.
Magali Veillon has gone to Abrams as Group Publishing Manager. She was in charge of international rights and sales for Black Dog and Leventhal.
Todd Doughty has moved from Random House to Warner Books, as Assistant Director of Publicity.
Promotions
Marisa Bulzone has been promoted to Executive Editor at Stewart, Tabori & Chang. Last month Debbie Yost joined the company as Senior Editor, Lifestyle Books. PublicAffairs Publicity Director Gene Taft is getting the additional title of Assistant Publisher and Lisa Kaufman, Director of Marketing adds the title of Senior Editor. Roger Freet has been named a Senior Editor for Harper San Francisco. Kate Travers has been promoted to Editor of Harper Perennial.
At S&S, Jen Bergstrom has been promoted to Publisher of the Simon Spotlight Entertainment and Simon Spotlight imprints.
Book Now For These Events
AAP’s Committee for Smaller and Independent Publishers hosts “2005 And Beyond,” on September 10 at American Conference Center, 780 Third Avenue. Topics include “New Internet Opportunities,” “Mining the Library Market,” and “Getting Media Coverage.” Presenters and panelists include AAP CEO Pat Schroeder, John Crutcher, Publisher of Bloomberg Press, Erick Goss, Senior Manager of Book Buying at Amazon, USA Today’s Deirdre Donahue, NPR Producer Melissa Eagan, MPI’s Constance Sayre and NYTBR’s Sam Tanenhaus. For information contact Kathryn Blough, at 212 255-0200 or kblough@publishers.org.
• American Book Producers Association presents “Making Books Happen: Book Producing Today” on October 26 at The Players Club, 16 Gramercy Park South. Panelists include Walker Books’ George Gibson, publishing veteran Jason Epstein, B&N’s Alan Kahn, and the apparently ubiquitous Sam Tanenhaus. Email office@apbaonline.org for more info.
Duly Noted
Legendary publisher Oscar Dystel will be inducted into the 2005 Life Hall of Fame at the Books for a Better Life gala on February 28. The event, which benefits the National MS New York City Chapter, takes place at the Millennium Broadway 145 West 44th Street in New York. The Event Chair is Steve Murphy, President and CEO Rodale.
• Sally Wood, President of Pearson Education’s Family Entertainment Network, tells PT about a book publishing event that is taking place online, with more than a million children reading the fictional journal of a 7th grader in Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Greg Heffley’s Journal, at Funbrain.com, FEN’s education site. The journal, which is written and illustrated by online game designer and comic strip author Jeff Kinney, was launched on May 20 and does not yet have an offline publisher. In September, Funbrain.com will relaunch Diary of a Wimpy Kid and run it one day at a time, corresponding with the actual days of the school calendar.
Memoriam
Celebrate the life of Roger W. Straus on Wednesday, September 29, 2004, at 3 p.m. at The Unterberg Poetry Center at the 92nd Street YM-YWHA, 1395 Lexington Avenue in New York.
