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Executive Moves, Book
Deals and More Industry News
FROM PUBLISHING
TRENDS (FEBRUARY 2002)
People
Steve Parr has been named
CEO of Abrams, following the departure of Mark
Magowan and Alan Rutsky (along with two dozen
others) at the end of the year. He was most recently
with Emap. . . . After 14 years at Harcourt,
Louise Pelan, VP and Publisher of Children’s
Books, is taking early retirement in March. . . . Kimberly
Whalen has just been hired at Trident Media Group
as MD of Foreign Rights. She was previously at the Rotrosen
Agency. . . . Peter Garlid leaves Mondadori,
where he has headed up the New York office. The staff,
along with Mondadori Printing’s US reps, will now report
directly to Italy. Garlid will become an independent
rights sales rep, with Mondadori as a client.
Skip
Fischer, who had been, briefly, COO of DK,
has left. Reporting responsibilities are now shared
by Therese Burke, Chuck Lang, and Dorothy
Regan. Meanwhile, Audrey Puzzo, most recently
of subrights.com, and previously at Pocket,
has been hired to handle sub rights. She reports to
Lang. . . . PW reports that Jon Galassi
will become president and publisher of FSG and
will relinquish his title of Editor-in-Chief to John
Glusman. Amy Scheibe, who left Doubleday
in December, has been named a Senior Editor at the
Free Press. She reports to Dominick Anfuso
and begins February 4.
Tracy
Howell has left Random House to join the
Gernert Agency. Linda Pennell, RH Rights
Director, will now assume responsibility for the foreign
rights department as well. Meanwhile, Luann Walther
has hired Angeli Singh as an editor at Vintage/Anchor,
from Mary Anne Thompson Associates. And Harcourt’s
publisher, Andre Bernard, has hired Da
Capo’s Executive Editor Andrea Schulz as
Senior Editor.
Paulist
Press has hired Robert Welsch as Director
of Sales and Marketing. Welsch had been Editorial Director
of Bookspan’s One Spirit Book Club. Ellen
Sibley has been promoted to President and Publisher
of Barron’s Educational Series. She was EVP.
. . . Pam Abrams has joined Scholastic
as Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of Scholastic
Parent and Family Publishing. Before joining Scholastic,
Abrams was Vice President and Editorial Director of
eToys.com. Abrams replaces Judsen Culbreth,
who has been named Vice President and Editorial Director
of Scholastic Family Custom Publishing.
Lucinda Karter, most recently of rightscenter.com,
has been named director of The French Publishers
Agency, replacing Kathryn Nanovic Morlet.
. . . Jim Clark has retired as Director of University
of California Press. . . . And with the closing
of Coliseum Books, Pat Sado can now be
reached at (212) 663-4866.
Duly
Noted
The Licensing Letter
reports that worldwide retail sales of licensed
products dropped 5% in 2001, to $109 billion. The US,
which represents two thirds of that total, dropped 5%,
while Japan’s sales dropped 13%, followed by Eastern
Europe, with a 10% falloff. Publishing related
licensed products dropped 8% in the US and Canada, to
$4.7 billion. Meanwhile, respondents to TLL’s
Annual Business Survey forecast a 2.4% drop for the
licensing business in 2002, though licensors — not surprisingly
— were more bullish than other respondents, predicting
a 3% increase. More information can be found at www.epmcom.com.
•
Marshall Editions, which is in the process of being
sold by its current owners, Just Group, parent
company of Mediakey, has offers in from Chrysalis
Books (the folks who bought Pavilion), Octopus
(via Hachette, now on an acquisitions spree),
and Andromeda (owned by Media Invest). A deal
is expected to be announced shortly.
•
Chris Kerr, PT’s tireless correspondent,
reports from the ALA winter conference that it
was wet and cold in New Orleans, and librarians were
in “short supply.” But there was “much chat about projected
cut-backs in library funding which will impact acquisitions,
hours, and staffing. Publishers were similarly desultory,
although this is more attributable to the wreckage of
last year’s retail results.” The Blackwell representative
claimed that the press leaks about the family wishing
to dump the publishing holdings were false, as the charter
requires a 3/4 vote to amend before holdings can be
proposed for sale, and no “side” has remotely close
to half.
•
Distributor Trafalgar Square’s Paul Feldstein
reports that he’s just picked up US distribution for
UK publisher Aurum Press, as well as Screenpress
Books. Their 40-odd distribution clients include
most of the major UK imprints, among them Random
House/Transworld, Orion, HarperCollins,
and Bloomsbury.
February
Dates
NYU is hosting
information sessions for its M.S. in Publishing on Feb.
7, 6-8 pm, and March 13, 6-8 pm. Both will be held at
the NYU Midtown Center, 11 West 42nd Street, 4th Floor.
Call (212) 998-7200.
•
BookTech 2002 is set for Feb. 11-13 at the Hilton.
Go to BookTechExpo.com.
•
Books for a Better Life is scheduled for Feb. 12
at the Millennium Broadway. Call (212) 463-7787, ext.
3043.
•
The AAP’s annual meeting will take place
on Feb. 27-28 at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington,
DC, as usual.
•
Before he became the eminent Grove Press
publisher that the world knows, Barney Rosset
was a photographer. His show “War Photographs: China
in Conflict 1944-1945” will be on view at the Janos
Gat Gallery, 1100 Madison Avenue (82nd Street).
Opening on Feb. 12, 6-9 pm.
Parties
On January 16, Sara
Nelson held a publication party for her friend Bob
Sabbag for his latest (from Little, Brown),
Loaded: A Misadventure on the Marijuana Trail. Also
present were Grove Atlantic’s Morgan Entriken
and Canongate’s Jamie Byng — both of whom
are the publishers of Sabbag’s first and now classic
Snowblind. Nelson has resigned from Book Publishing
Report/Primedia (which had taken over Inside.com
following Steve Brill’s departure) to become
Senior Contributing Editor, Books at Glamour.
She will also be writing the book she just sold (via
IMG’s Reiter) to Penguin Putnam. She’s at Sara_Nelson@condenast.com.
Earlier in January Inside.com’s David Carr
was named Media Reporter and Lorne Manly Deputy
Media Editor of The NY Times.
•
Overlook Press, the Museum of TV & Radio,
and Harry Evans co-hosted a publication party
for BBC Reports: “On America, Its Allies and Enemies
and the Counterattack on Terrorism” at the museum on
Feb. 23. Among the luminaries in attendance were Jane
Friedman and Lewis Lapham.
Know
Thy Customer . . .
The Book Reporter (bookreporter.com)
surveyed its loyal visitors recently, and found some
interesting stats. For one thing, these are serious
book lovers: 39% buy one or two books in a typical month,
with 28% buying 3-4 books (37% say they read 3-5 books
a month). 57% buy one or more books online in a typical
month (remember, this is an online poll). 21% get information
about books from local newspapers, 15% from The NY
Times, and 8.7% from Oprah. While 33% go
to Amazon to learn about books (and 18% to BN.com
and 4.8% to Powells — the only other online retailer
mentioned — more than half visit bookstores in a typical
month. 55% claim they have visited author websites in
the past three months. But 85% have never read an e-book
on any device, including Palm and PC. In a separate
survey, bookreporter’s readinggroupguides.com
looked at the mammoth but shadowy universe of reading
groups. Among their respondents, 46% meet at members’
houses, while 12% meet at the library, anywhere from
8-12 times a year. While 47% said the group votes on
the books to be read, 30% said that in their group,
each member chooses a title. Bestseller fiction, literary
fiction and biography/memoirs were the top three categories,
and though for 27% paperbacks were the format of choice,
62% said that the format was not important — a response
that flies in the face of many publishers’ experience.
Where do they get their books? 20.5% go to the chains,
18% borrow them from the library, and the same number
— 6.4% — get them either from an independent or an online
retailer. But listen up: 30% said they’d be interested
in buying books in bulk, if they could get a discount
of 30% or more.
©2002
Publishing Trends
