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Executive Moves, Book
Deals and More Industry News
FROM PUBLISHING
TRENDS (MAY 2002)
People
Paul Gottlieb has
been named Executive Director of the Aperture Foundation.
He leaves Abrams after 22 years, during which
time he held the titles of Publisher, President, CEO,
and most recently, Company Director and Vice Chairman
of the La Martiniere Groupe. He begins August
1.
Brigitte
Weeks is leaving Guideposts to become Vice
President and Editor-in-Chief of Bookspan’s Crossings
and Black Expressions book clubs. She has been
at Guideposts since 1994, and was previously at Book-of-the-Month
Club, before it merged with the Doubleday Clubs.
Weeks replaces Michele Rapkin, who is moving
to Doubleday to become Editor-in-Chief of its
religious imprints. She, in turn, is succeeding Eric
Major, who is retiring to England this summer.
Linda Pennell has resigned from Random House,
where she has been Director of Subsidiary Rights, effective
the end of May. At that time, she may be reached via
email (lpennell51@
aol.com) or at (914) 238-1608. . . Anita Diggs
has left Ballantine where she was Senior Editor
in charge of One World. She had moved from Warner,
when she was in publicity, two years earlier. She may
be reached at (212) 531-1973, or at anitadiggs@aol.com.
. . Picador Associate Publisher Melanie Fleishman
is leaving the company and may be reached at fleishmanm@hotmail.com.
. . As announced elsewhere, Kris Kliemann has
left Fodor’s and Alison Gross has been
named Publisher. Kliemann may be reached at kkliemann914@aol.com.
Amy Metsch, formerly of Questia, started
at Random Audio as Senior Acquisitions Editor,
reporting to Robert Allen (who, in turn, reports
to Jenny Frost). . . Amy Gurney has joined
Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman as of counsel. She
has represented Yo-Yo Ma, Michael Jackson,
and Jose Carreras, as well as Dreamworks
SKG, Miramax Films, New Line Cinema
and WalMart.
In children’s publishing: Houghton Mifflin has
appointed Andrea Davis Pinkney as VP and Publisher
of Houghton Mifflin’s juvenile books. She was
Editoral Director of Hyperion Books for Children
at Disney. . . Bernette Ford is leaving
Scholastic, where she was the founder and VP/Editorial
Director of Cartwheel Books for over twelve years.
She will be an independent packager of children’s books,
working on multicultural titles as well as books for
the very young. After Memorial Day, she can be reached
at her home office: (718) 434-3677 or bfordhome@aol.com.
In other Scholastic news, Kate Nunn has been
named Editor-in-Chief of the Children’s Press
and Franklin Watts imprints. She was previously
editorial director of Benchmark Books, an imprint
of Marshall Cavendish. . . Joyce Stein
has been named marketing Communications Manager at Innovative
Kids USA, a publisher of educational/ interactive
books. She was most recently Marketing Director at LKC
(Larousse Kingfisher Chambers). . . Meanwhile, word
is that Bertelsmann/Berryville, the US printer
of record for the Harry Potter books, is planning to
commit 50% more capacity to producing the next Harry
Potter for Scholastic.
The lure of the book: Earlier in April Rob Weisbach
went to S&S as an Editor-at-Large, after
a hiatus of several years. Now Marion Maneker
is leaving New York Magazine to become Editorial
Director of HarperBusiness and an Executive Editor
of HarperCollins trade. When asked about his prospective
list, he emailed PT that “the future of the imprint
is to broaden the idea of what a business book can be
to include reportage, histories, memoirs, and books
that make a provocative argument about the economic
context that surrounds our social lives, and eventually
anything of interest to millions of people who subscribe
to the Wall Street Journal.”
As reported earlier, Penguin president David
Wan will leave his current job to become president
and CEO of Harvard Business School Press. He
replaces Linda Doyle, who will join the school’s
faculty. Meanwhile, Harvard Business Review Editor
Suzy Wetlaufer has resigned.
Tricia Conley has joined Viking as Managing
Editor. She was most recently Director of Communications
at the Tilton School in NH, but had been at Penguin
Putnam from 1995-1999. Tory Klose has been promoted
to Executive Managing Editor at Viking. She has been
at Viking since November 1997, and before that she was
the President of K&N Bookworks, a small book
packaging company.
Duly
Noted
According to Broadway’s Charlie Conrad,
it all started with The Big Con. He and B’way
Publisher Gerry Howard were discussing Howard’s
republishing of the classic book by David Maurer,
and Conrad happened to mention his favorite con
man book, Catch Me If You Can. Looking for a
copy to give Howard, Conrad discovered that it was OP.
On to the web, and before long he had located the author,
Frank Abagnale, and had contracted with him to
reissue the book for a “reasonable” sum. Oh yes, Abagnale
did mention that Dreamworks had recently optioned
it, but this was one of many options that had been negotiated
since its publication in 1980. Published by Broadway
in August 2000, the reissue has sold almost 80,000 copies
so far in its latest edition. And the movie, starring
Tom Hanks, Leonardo Di Caprio, and
Christopher Walken, and directed by Steven
Spielberg (Abagnale has a cameo as a pilot), is
scheduled for a Christmas Day release. It is currently
filming in the New York area.
•
President and Publisher Peter Mayer announced
that Overlook Press has acquired Ardis Publishers,
“the leading publisher of Russian literature in the
English-speaking world.” The company, with a backlist
of about 300 books, was acquired from cofounder Ellendea
Proffer Teasley, widow of the founder Carl Proffer.
Go to www.ardisbooks.com.
• Book Tech Magazine’s April issue highlights
Dover Publications, which is now a part of Courier,
its printer for the past 30-plus years. The publisher
employs more than 180 people and has approximately 8,000
titles in print, 75 percent of them paperbacks. Over
2,000 titles are reprinted every year, in addition to
500 new titles. Book Tech mentions that Courier
has significantly upgraded Dover’s technology: it has
moved to computer-to-plate and operates on a digital
workflow. It can produce runs as low as 1,000 but maintains
efficiencies by printing multiple titles of books that
have the same paper and trim size. What has not changed,
though, is Dover’s nonreturnable policy — the reason,
says Dover’s president Clarence Strowbridge,
that its prices still run as low as a buck a book.
•
The early birds who have signed up for Publishing
Services Network’s new F.A.S.T. service (Fair Appointments
Service Team) include (according to a principal) “a
US literary agent, a UK book packager, a German editorial
bureau, a UK picture library and a US comic book publisher.
It’s a simple and inexpensive flat fee solution to the
worry of filling your diaries with profitable meetings
at the world’s major book fairs: BEA, Frankfurt, Bologna
and London.” Contact Jim Sutton at (301) 371-7603 or
go to Booth #2822 at Javits to meet Jim and his colleagues
Gwyn Headley and Alan Greene.
Parties
PEN held its
annual Gala on April 24 at the Pierre Hotel in New York
City. Among those in attendance were Lauren Bacall,
Jessye Norman, Ron Howard, Dan Rather,
David Byrne, Joe Klein, Sylvia Nasar,
David Remnick, George Plimpton, Amy Tan,
and most of the industry machers. The benefit
evening was co-chaired by Larry Kirshbaum,
Toni Goodale (who also served as Master of Ceremonies),
and Susan Lyne.
•
At Carole Baron’s party for first novelist
Hari Kunzru’s well-reviewed The Impressionist,
on hand were B&N and B&N.com’s Jill
Lamar and Brenda Marsh, BOMC’s Victoria
Skurnick, BookSense’s Carl Lennertz, and
new Pearson Chairman and CEO, John Makinson
(formerly CFO) along with his UK and US agents and UK
publisher, Simon Prosser of Hamish Hamilton.
•
Lynn Goldberg hosted the event celebrating the reissue
of James McCourt’s Mawrdew Czgowchwz by
NY Review of Books. On hand were publisher Rea
Hederman, agent Elaine Markson, press in
the persons of Sarah Nelson, Celia McGee,
and Marion Maneker (then at NY Magazine)
and friends Joel Grey and John Waters.
•
Party animal Peter Mayer fêted the publication
of UK writer Geoff Nicholson’s ninth novel, Bedlam
Burning, at his wife Inez Bon’s restaurant,
NL.
©2002
Publishing Trends
