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Executive
Moves, Book Deals, and More Industry News
FROM PUBLISHING
TRENDS (JULY 2003)
People
Rich Freese has
been named President of Publishers Group West,
reporting to Kevan Lyon, EVP for Distribution
and Publishing Services at AMS. Freese, who will relocate
to the San Francisco area, succeeds Charlie Winton,
founder and former President and CEO of PGW, and now
Group Chairman and CEO of Avalon Publishing.
Another publisher on the move is Karen Kreiger,
Rich Freese’s wife and currently VP Custom Publishing
and International Sales of Creative Publishing.
She may be reached at karenkreiger@hotmail.com.
Meanwhile, earlier in the month Winton announced
that Neil Ortenberg had been named EVP, responsible
for the New York publishers and reporting to Susan
Reich. Avalon also announced that Herman Graf,
Publisher of Carroll & Graf, would assume
the role of Editor-at-Large and that Will Balliett
would succeed him as Publisher, reporting to Ortenberg.
Martin Levin is moving to The Van Tulleken
Company as a partner, and will be working on transactions.
He tells Publishing Trends that he will continue
to “maintain a relationship” with his old law firm,
Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman. The firm recently
announced the addition of Jeremy Nussbaum, formerly
a partner at Kay & Boose.
Courtney
Muller has resigned as Executive Director of New
York Is Book Country, to return to her former employer,
Reed Exhibitions as Divisional Vice President.
She will continue to consult with the staff and board
through the 25th anniversary events in the Fall. A successor
will be named shortly.
Howard
Weill, formerly SVP Deputy Publisher at Random
House, is consulting full time for Bookspan,
overseeing Current Member Marketing. As reported elsewhere,
Victoria Skurnick was named Editor-in-Chief,
BOMC, continuing to report to Larry Shapiro,
who is now VP, Editorial Director. Kathy Kiernan,
Editor-in-Chief of Book Development, will now report
to Brigitte Weeks, VP and newly named Editorial
Director overseeing Crossings, Science Fiction Book
Club, Black Expressions, and Outdoorsmen’s Edge. Sharon
Fantera and Patricia Gift have also been
named Editorial Directors. And congrats to Mary Idoni,
known to many as the guardian of the manuscript department,
who celebrates fifty years at the clubs this summer.
Meanwhile,
back at RH HQ: Barbara Marks is leaving Crown
to start her own pr/marketing company. She has been
with the company for 22 years. As of late July she may
been reached at (203) 571-8103 or via email at bmarksfitter@optonline.net.
. . Linda Kaplan has just gone to Crown as group
Subrights Director. She was most recently at Hyperion.
. . And Larry Weissman has left Random, where
he worked for Richard Sarnoff investing in companies
like Xlibris and Audible.com. He may be
reached at larryweissman@
earthlink.net. . . No word yet on a replacement
for Christine McNamara, who moved from Publisher
of Random Audio to VP, Director of Sales for Random
House Information Group, Adult Audio, Value, and Large
Print divisions. . . In the latest RH sales reorg, Madeline
McIntosh and Joan DeMayo head up the new
Adult and Children’s sales forces, respectively.
Angela
Baggetta has joined Goldberg McDuffie as
Publicity Manager. She was previously at Basic Books
and had been Publicity Director at Doubleday’s
religious line. . . As reported elsewhere Emily Loose
has joined The Penguin Press as Senior Editor.
She was previously at Cambridge U.P. She reports
to Ann Godoff. And Bernadette Malone goes
to Penguin to head up the new conservative line, under
Adrian Zackheim. She was previously at Regnery.
Jonathan
Weiss, VP Business Development, is leaving Oxford
U.P. in August. . . Editor Andrea Heyde and
Senior Editor Katie Hall have both left Harcourt.
(Heyde after one year, Hall three months.) In a reorganization
of the sales deparment, Chris Barnard, VP Director
of Sales, has left PGW. She may be reached at chbarnard@earthlink.net.
. . Maron Waxman has retired from the American
Museum of Natural History, spurred on by AMNH’s
layoff of as many as 60 people. The Publications department
has been closed down.
Chris
North will move from his position as General Manager
of electronic publishing at Harper to the newly created
job of COO at HarperCollins Canada, reporting to David
Kent. . . For anyone not in the extensive address book
of HC’s just retired Larry Ashmead, he may be
reached at Lashmead@earthlink.net.
Duly
Noted
Words Without Borders,
the “Online Magazine for International Literature,”
has launched its new site. Though it’s not all in place
yet, check it out at www.wordswithoutborders.org.
And another good site for publicizing independent literary
publishing is Literary Landscape at www.literarylandscape.com.
•
Broadway’s Charlie Conrad tells PT that
Invisible Eden: the story of the Christa Worthington
Cape Cod murder “has taken off like a rocket: on sale
Tuesday and already seven printings for a total of 51,000
in print. It’s really great that a literary author like
Maria Flook is succeeding like this.” Seven
printings?
•
A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education
entitled “Selling Out: a Textbook Example” opens
with the following: “James Williams received
his letter last fall. ‘Dear Professor,’ it began. The
form letter went on to offer him $4,000 for reviewing
an introductory history textbook. “I thought, ‘That’s
an interesting amount of money,’” says the associate
professor of history at Middle Tennessee State University.”
The story goes on to outline in detail how textbook
publishers — from North West Publishing, which
offered the amount cited above, but also involving behemoths
like Pearson — are finding ways to get the attention
of university professors and their departments by offering
money, royalties, and other incentives. As with the
above, the payola is often in the guise of a fee for
“reviewing” a book or writing a portion of a customized
textbook. Go to http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i42/42a00801.htm.
•
It’s hard to find publishers who want to talk about
what they’re reading, for fear of offending those whose
books they’re not reading. Two industry execs who do
are both reading the same book: Bob Iger, ABC
honcho to whom Hyperion reports, and Phyllis
Grann, who says she’s on a “nonfiction kick,” are
reading An Unfinished Life, Robert Dallek’s
biography of JFK, published by Little, Brown.
Iger is also reading Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt,
and Grann just finished When Hollywood Was King,
about her late boss Lew Wasserman.
Parties
The reopening of the downtown Borders —
a block east from its original location at the World
Trade Center on Broadway — was well attended by almost
1000 publishers, and reports are that it felt like a
real shot in the arm for the industry, a feeling echoed
by all. Gift certificates offering a 20% discount were
handed to guests with proceeds going to the Windows
of Hope Family Relief Fund. The WTC branch had worked
closely with the restaurant and held numerous events
there and chose this as the charity partner for the
opening. A quick check on who was buying what indicated
that most of the publishers’ purchases were CDs!
•
180 people attended CLMP’s fundraiser at
the Paula Cooper Gallery coinciding with the
launch of Jack Macrae and Paula Cooper’s
192 Books, lit by the glow of Dan Flavin’s
florescent sculptures on June 19th. Poet Kimiko Hahn
spoke, opening with: “Without independent literary publishers
there would be no poetry in America.” Guests included
Adam Haslett, Peter Mayer, Nan Talese,
Jill Bialosky, and Gerry Howard,
and a “mountain of books and mags for people to mine
in the center of gallery included Open City,
Bomb, FuturePoem, Soft Skull Press,
Feminist Press, and many many more” our correspondent
tells us.
In
Memoriam
Sara Ann Freed,
the much respected Editor-in-Chief of Mysterious
Press and Senior Editor at Warner Books,
died on June 25 after a brief battle with leukemia.
A memorial service is scheduled for September 17, her
birthday.
©2003
Publishing Trends
