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Executive Moves, Book Deals and More Industry News
FROM
PUBLISHING TRENDS (AUGUST 2001)
People
HarperCollins has announced
the long-awaited restructuring of its sales department:
Josh Marwell has been named SVP Sales, with specific
responsibility for Harper Trade Adult and overall corporate
responsibility for special sales and sales operations
(Business Manager Jeff Meltzer will report to
him). Andrea Pappenheimer, SVP Sales, Children’s
Publishing, and George Bick, VP Sales Morrow/Avon,
will assume overall responsibility for their lines.
All three will report to COO Glenn D’Agnes with
dotted line reporting to their respective divisional
heads. In addition, Jeff Hobbs, recently named
head of sales for Harper San Francisco, will report
to Marwell. Bick will continue to sell all publishing
lines into the mass merchandisers.
Paul Bresnick, most recently at LiveReads
and Morrow, is joining Michael Carlisle
as an affiliate agent. He will continue to do editorial
work for other clients. In the last year Carlisle &
Co. has had a number of agents who have worked on an
affiliate basis. Two, Marly Rusoff and Larry
Chilnick, have since left (Rusoff to start her own
agency, Chilnick to focus on packaging), while two others
— Don Lamm and Bob Bernstein — are still
involved. Lamm helped bring in David Kennedy’s
American Pageant series and Bob Sutton’s Weird
Ideas that Work, which will be published by The Free
Press.
More movement in the children’s book arena: Victoria
Welles has been named Editorial Director of the
new Bloomsbury USA juvenile book division. She
comes from Viking Children’s books. . . . Bonnie
Bader has been named Editor in Chief of Grosset.
She was Editorial Director at Golden. . . . Kathy
Dawson has been promoted to Executive Editor of
GP Putnam’s Children’s Books. She was most recently
Senior Editor. Meanwhile, David Ford,
founding President/CEO of Candlewick Press, has
sold his flourishing bookshop in Georgia and will be
moving to NY, “eager for a new challenge.” He can be
reached at gjford1@bellsouth.net.
Christina Harcar goes to St. Martin’s as
Director of Subsidiary Rights. She was previously at
Random House Audio. . . . Laura Matthews
has been named Deputy Editor of Martha Stewart Living.
She was previously Senior Editor at GP Putnam . . .
. Jeannette Watson has returned to bookselling
with her acquisition of the Lenox Hill Bookstore,
where she has worked off and on since starting her own
Books & Co. imprint at Turtle Point Press,
following the closing of the eponymous bookstore in
1997. . . . Yulia Borodyanskaya has been named
Subsidiary Rights Manager at Newmarket Press.
She was previously an account executive at rightscenter.com,
and before that, Foreign Rights Associate for Doubleday.
. . . Hugh Shiebler has been named Sales Manager
for Barrons. He was most recently at Zagat,
and Barefoot Books, and before that, at Globe
Pequot . . . . Skip Fischer has been named
CEO of DK U.S., following the departure of Danny
Gurr last month. He reports primarily to David
Shanks, with a secondary reporting line to Anthony
Forbes Watson, CEO of The Penguin Group [UK]. Meanwhile,
Shanks announced that Liz Perl has been promoted
to the position of Vice President Director of Marketing,
Trade Paperbacks for the Berkley Publishing Group
and NAL. She had previously been named Director of Marketing
for Riverhead Trade Paperbacks. . . . Heather
Byer has left Contentville, where she was
Executive Editor, and is doing freelance book editing
for McGraw-Hill’s college division, script reading
for USA Films, and freelance magazine writing.
She is reachable at heathbyer@earthlink.net.
Gotham
Scouting Partners, formed by May Wuthrich
in 1998, has added Terry Guerin (ex-Tapestry
Films) as a partner, and DW Gibson as a scouting
associate. Recent acquisitions by clients include Martin
Dugard’s Blood Brothers, Craig Holden’s Jazz
Bird, and Hodding Carter’s Viking Voyage.
Victoria
Barnsley, Chief Executive Officer and Publisher
at HarperCollins UK, announced that it is restructuring
its UK publishing divisions into two halves, each with
its own managing director. Amanda Ridout, currently
the Managing Director of Headline, will become
MD of General Books, which will combine the Trade Division,
Fourth Estate, Thorsons, and Children’s.
Thomas Webster, currently Publishing Director
of Oxford University Press, will become MD of
Collins, comprising Cartographic, Dictionaries,
Education, and Reference.
Deals
Gerry Howard
bought a “fun” book (what other kinds are there, on
this subject?) about bartending, “a kind of Kitchen
Confidential of the bar world,” we’re told by
Toby Checchini from Bill Clegg at his newish
agency (Burnes & Clegg).
Duly
Noted
The Rights Report,
published by Whitaker (publishers of The Bookseller),
has announced that it has ceased publication of the
printed version. Launched at Frankfurt 1999 as a report
on international rights transaction in books, film,
and TV, it recently “has proved impossible to convert
high acclamation to a level of sales revenue needed
for us to continue our extensive network of international
correspondents. . . .” However, a web-based service
“offering a database of rights stories and information”
is still available to the publication’s subscribers.
In other Whitaker news, veteran Louis Baum has
returned to the company, after a foray into the dotcom
world.
• Marjorie Scardino’s latest letter to employees
reviews the first-six-month results, which have disappointed
investors. She writes: “Penguin’s core publishing
in the US and the UK is in good shape, too — more bestsellers
than ever, and more successful new authors. Australia,
where we have a sizeable business, has instigated a
new tax on books, so that’s hurting in the short run,
but if I know our crowd there, they’ll work out a way
to counteract the pain. Dorling Kindersley is
turning out to be a great addition not only to Penguin,
but also to Pearson Education, who can use the
DK brilliance for creating books you just can’t resist
reading to make textbooks just as compelling. DK has
quickly combined some of its operations with Penguin
while still keeping its own special personality. Just
wait until you see the first in the newest DK line,
Animal, a giant encyclopedia of wildlife — out in the
autumn.”
•
Target Marketing’s Denny Hatch, writing
of “The Rise and Fall of Time-Life Books,” in
the June/July issue, wonders what went awry with a company
started in 1960 whose “titanic successes” made the division
the company’s most profitable for several years. When
Time-Life Books closed its doors this past January,
Hank Steuver of The Washington Post wrote
that it was “an early triumph of direct marketing, selling
30 million books a year at its zenith. That’s a lot
of Middle American coffee tables.” Hatch comes up with
some hypotheses about what happened to the company,
suggesting that aggressive offers to would-be subscribers
ended up bringing in worse customers who dropped out
without buying or paying. Then, as Time-Life Music became
more profitable, all the development money went into
that division, rather than book development. Finally,
“All these books were sold by stroking the intellectual
egos of consumers, but they were bought as furniture
— something warm and impressive to fill empty bookshelves
in order to achieve respect and affirmation.” But the
allure of information on an installment basis palled
as the web offered more opportunities to find the information
fast, and for free. Belt tightening and layoffs didn’t
help stem the flow of red ink, and the merger of AOL
and Time Warner ensured the division’s demise.
•
EPM Communications, publisher of The Licensing
Letter, just released its annual Licensed Property
Benchmarking Survey. The book covers all sorts of
licensing, but it’s no surprise that Literary Properties,
a catchall that includes books and their characters,
tend to have a much longer licensing life than other
properties. But this is an area driven by both smaller
properties — 59% have generated sales of licensed merchandise
that are less than $10 million over their lifetime —
and some behemoths that have generated $100 million
or more. Books (mostly children’s) account for roughly
half of all properties, but each segment — books, comic
books, and comic strips — has an unusually high 10%
of properties that are over the $100 million mark. Contact
EPM at info@epmcom.com
or call 212 941-0099.
Mazeltov
Congratulations to
Random’s Peter Olson and Candace Carpenter,
Chair of iVillage, who will marry September 8.
©2001
Publishing Trends
