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Executive Moves, Book Deals and More Industry News
FROM PUBLISHING
TRENDS (NOVEMBER 2002)
People
Change is the constant
in publishing at the moment: Bookspan cut its
staff by about a dozen people, including longtimers
Norm Schneider, VP Marketing, and Nancy
Whitin, who oversaw the Specialty Clubs, including
The Good Cook, History, Crafters, Country Homes, Military,
Stage & Screen, Mystery Guild, etc.
Natalie
Chapman has been named VP, Publisher, Culinary Books
at Wiley. She was most recently at Creative
Homeowner Press. . . Will Kiester has been
named publisher of a packaged line of coedition books
at Quarto Publishing. He will be based in New
York and was formerly Senior Editor at Black Dog
& Leventhal. . . Jill Bernstein has gone
to Ecco Press as Director of Publicity. She was
previously VP, PR Publishing at Meredith . .
. Mark Bryant has gone to HarperCollins
as Executive Editor, reporting to Susan Weinberg.
He was most recently at Men’s Journal.
Kate
Folkers has left FSG and has been named Sr.
Marketing manager for Adult Books at Harcourt.
Both she and husband Steve Kasdin, who has been
named Director of Marketing for Harcourt Children’s,
will be moving to San Diego. Kasdin had been Associate
Marketing Director at Scholastic. . . Chris
Knutsen, who came over from the New Yorker,
is leaving Riverhead. Wendy Carlton is
leaving New York but not Riverhead, and will remain
Nick Hornby’s editor.
Tom
Stewart has been named Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard
Business Review, which was purportedly looking for
a “thought leader” to succeed the infamous Suzy Wetlaufer.
He will commute from NY to Cambridge. Most recently
he wrote a column for Time Inc.’s Business
2.0 and was on the Board of Editors at Fortune.
But previous to his magazine publishing, he held several
positions in book publishing, including President and
Publisher of Atheneum.
More on children’s: Liza Baker has been named
Editorial Director, Hyperion Books for Children,
replacing Andrea David Pinckney, who went to
Houghton Mifflin in May as Publisher of Children’s.
Carol Roeder, S&S Children’s VP, Sub.
Rights and International Markets, has left the company.
SVP Alan Smagler is looking for her replacement.
. . HarperCollins’ Susan Katz announced “with
deep regret” that Harriett Barton, VP and Creative
Director of Children’s Books, has retired. Barton began
at T.Y. Crowell and joined HC in 1977 when Harper bought
the company. . . Following the departure of Maria
Modugno, Editor-in-Chief of the children’s book
division, Little, Brown VP and Publisher David
Ford announced that Megan Tingley has become
VP, Associate Publisher and Editor-in-Chief while continuing
to acquire titles for her eponymous imprint. Bill
Boedeker, currently VP Marketing, has also been
named Associate Publisher . . . Gary Richardson
has been named Publisher,
McGraw-Hill Children’s Publishing, Education.
Previously he had been at Zonderkidz.
Finally, Phyllis Fogelman, longtime children’s
book editor and publisher, has resigned as VP Publisher
of her own imprint at Penguin Putnam Books for Young
Readers.
Bloomsbury USA Editorial Director Karen
Rinaldi takes over as Publisher in December, when
Alan Wherry retires. As Wherry puts it, “Enough
is enough” after 43 years of working.
As announced earlier, reorganization at Random continues
apace, with David Naggar moving into the position
of President of Random Audio and Diversified Publishing
Group, reporting to Jenny Frost, and Christine
McNamara becoming VP, Publisher of Random Adult
Audio. Mary Beth Roche, who was Publishing Director
of Random’s Audible.com, goes to Holtzbrinck’s Audio
Renaissance (which recently relocated from the West
Coast) as Publisher starting November 18. Robert
Allen’s position of President, Random Audio
has been eliminated. To the delight of many, Don
Weisberg returns as head of the Random House sales
group, while remaining EVP/COO. Michael Palgon has
been promoted to EVP of Doubleday Broadway Publishing
Group. He was most recently SVP Deputy Publisher.
After a short stint at Scribner, Ileene Smith
lands at Holt, where she’ll serve as Executive
Editor, reporting to Jennifer Barth. . . Molly
Lyons has been named Associate Editor at Lifetime
magazine, handling all the book coverage. Lyons was
previously at SELF.
As reported elsewhere, Stephen Hanselman, Publisher
and Editorial Director of HarperSanFrancisco,
has been promoted to SVP, Publisher of a new general
books division that combines HarperSanFrancisco and
HarperInformation. Hanselman announced that Mickey
Maudlin is joining HSF as Editorial Director. He
had been at Christianity Today International.
In addition, Mark Tauber returns to HSF as Associate
Publisher. He had left to be a founding partner of Internet
start-up Beliefnet.com and Agora Media.
Tauber will oversee marketing and sales, and assist
Hanselman in running the division.
November
Dates
The Small Press Center launches the third
in its series of Interviews With Great Publishers
on Nov. 12. Tom McCormack, former CEO
of St. Martin’s and author of Endpapers,
which just closed after a four month run, will be interviewed
by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt at Small Press Center
on 20 W. 44th from 6 to 7:30. Go to www.smallpress.org.
•
Also on November 12 is the Mercantile Library’s
“Rare Books, Fine Wines” gala evening, co-hosted with
Bookspan and Jeroboam Wines, at which
The Clifton Fadiman Medal for Excellence in Fiction
will be presented. Call (212) 755-6710 or contact mercantile_library@msn.com.
•
November 20, 2002 is the date for this year’s National
Book Awards gala at the New York Marriott Marquis.
Tickets are $1,000, but for $100 you can sip wine and
eat canapes with the best of ’em before dinner. Contact
natbkfd@mindspring.com
or go to www.nationalbook.org.
Looking
Ahead
On Wed., December 4,
HarperCollins’ Larry Ashmead, bookseller Roxanne
Coady, PW’s Daisy Maryles, Little,
Brown’s Michael Pietsch, and moderator
Gayle Feldman will discuss “Best and Worst of
Times: Best Books vs. Bestsellers in a Changing Business.”
The event, which takes place at Columbia Journalism
School (Lecture Hall, 3rd Floor) at 116th and Broadway,
is sponsored by the National Arts Journalism Program
at the Columbia Journalism School, and co-sponsored
by the Women’s Media Group.
Duly
Noted
In the webbed world: Arts & Letters Daily,
a site that died earlier in October, has been resurrected
after the Chronicle of Higher Education acquired
it, according to The Chronicle’s website, along
with the assets of its parent company, which published
the magazine Lingua Franca. The sale is expected
to close imminently.
•
comScore Networks, which tracks e-commerce, reported
very strong sales for the third quarter of 2002. Total
consumer online sales for the quarter reached $17.9
billion, up 35% versus the third quarter of 2001, and
up 2% versus the second quarter of 2002. Year-to-date
sales through Sept. 30 totaled $52.5 billion, up 41%
versus the same period in 2001, and nearly equal to
the $53.1 billion in spending posted in all of 2001.
Books are up 10% versus last year, to $538 million,
though the 4th quarter is what profitability hinges
on.
Parties
& Events
Join agent Tom Wallace,
publisher of Old Earth Books Michael Walsh, and
the Gotham Book Mart’s Andreas Brown to
celebrate the republication of Edward (Ted) Whittemore’s
Jerusalem Quartet — including his first novel,
Quin’s Shanghai Circus, all originally published
by Wallace at Holt — at the Gotham Book Mart
on Monday, November 11 from 5 to 7 pm. It may be your
last chance to visit the space before Brown moves.
•
The publication of Al Silverman’s umpteenth
book, It’s Not Over till It’s Over: The Stories Behind
the Most Magnificent Heart-Stopping Sports Miracles
of Our Time (Overlook Press), was held at
NYU’s Fales Library where Silverman has donated his
papers, which include his editorial and research notes,
as well as files on the selection process at BOMC, where
he presided for many years. He was introduced by the
Fales’ Marvin Taylor, who confessed he
had come around to sports late in life, and Peter
Mayer, who referred to him as “publishing’s pater
familias.” Silverman then read from the Ali/Frazier
fight in ’73 chapter where he referred to Ali as “the
Yo-Yo Ma of sports.”
©2002
Publishing Trends
