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Executive Moves, Book Deals, and More
Industry News
FROM PUBLISHING
TRENDS (AUGUST 2004)
People
Publishers
haven’t gotten the memo about summer doldrums, apparently,
because this has been a record month for job changes:
Phaidon Press
announced that Chris North has become MD, working
out of its London headquarters. North was most recently
at HarperCollins, first in New York and later
in Toronto as COO of HarperCollins Canada.
Janet Harris
has left Storey Books (part of Workman),
where she was Publisher. She may be reached at janetharris2004@aol.com.
. . . Michelle Lewy has been named Director of
Client Services for Spier Inc. succeeding Michael
Kazan, who went to Bennett Book Advertising
earlier this year. She was mostly recently with Scholastic.
. . . As noted elsewhere, Michele Martin has
gone to Avalon as Publishing Director.
Diana Blough
has left Random House Children’s, where she was Director
of Marketing, for the same position at Bloomsbury.
And Anne Merrow is leaving Broadway to
go to Thomas Dunne Books as an editor.
Luke Dempsey
has joined Crown working for Editor in Chief
Kristin Kiser. He was most recently a Senior
Editor at Atria Books. Last month Rick Horgan
went from Warner to Crown as Executive Editor. Meanwhile,
John Ahern has moved from Warner to McGraw-Hill,
as Senior Editor reporting to Judith McCarthy.
. . . STC has hired Debbie Yost as Senior
Editor. She was most recently at Rodale and Prentice-Hall.
Wendy Broad
Lazear has left the agency business and joined Houghton
Mifflin as Executive Editor. Jennifer Haller
has left HM for Harcourt, in the newly created
position of VP of Sales, Children’s Books. She will
begin there in September.
Cynthia Good,
most recently President and Publisher of Penguin
Canada, has been named Director of the Creative Publishing
Program School for Creative and Performing Art at Humber
College in Toronto.
Justin Schwartz
has joined Wiley as Senior Editor. He just published
his first book, Veg Out Vegetarian Guide to New York
City (Gibbs-Smith) in June. Pamela Adler
has left Wiley for Rodale, where she is an editor.
Publishers
Group West announced that Kevin Votel, who
was previously National Accounts Director for BGI, has
been named VP Marketing. And Charles Roberts,
who was let go from S&S after 40 years, the last
20 as VP Field Sales, will sell to accounts across the
Southeast, Midwest and Southwest. Michelle Fischer
has joined PGW as Mass Merchandise Sales Representative.
Meanwhile Maureen Phelan, formerly Special Markets
Manager, left PGW on July 9 to pursue other interests,
and Peg O’ Donnell, PGW’s New England sales representative,
is leaving to join NBN as a marketing manager
in September. Chitra Bopardikar has been named
VP International Sales — a new position —reporting to
Rich Freese. She was with McGraw-Hill.
Susanna Phillips
has joined Sesame Workshop as Director, International
Publishing. Phillips’ focus will be on increasing the
Workshop’s publishing activity outside of the U.S. Most
recently, Phillips was Director, International and Domestic
Special Sales at Reader’s Digest Children’s Books.
Following the
closing of Thomson’s NY Business & Professional
Publishing office, Myles Thompson, founder
and publisher of Thomson-Texere, has left the
company. He may be reached at (917) 969-2024, mylescthompson@yahoo.com.
Lee Thompson will continue her consulting for
Thomson and may be reached at liananthompson@yahoo.com,
(212) 988-2580.
In Publicity:
Everyone changed jobs this month. At Ballantine,
Director of Publicity Kim Hovey was named to
the new position of Director of Marketing. Sanyu
Dillon joins the group Director of Marketing at
Little Random. She was Assistant Director of
Marketing at S&S. Both report to Associate
Publisher Libby McGuire. Little Random Publicity
Director Tom Perry is being promoted to Publicity
Director for the entire RH Publishing Group, also reporting
to McGuire. Sally Marvin has been promoted to
Deputy Publicity Director for the Random imprint. Meanwhile,
Seale Ballenger has left Atria and may
be reached at shb6964@aol.com.
Justin Loeber is Atria’s new Director of Publicity.
Loeber has held the same title at the HarperCollins
imprint. Jennifer Swihart has been promoted to
Director of Publicity at HarperCollins.
Linda B. Keene
will become EVP, Marketing at Scholastic, stepping down
from the company’s board of directors in order to take
the position. She succeeds Dick Spaulding, who
remains as a consultant.
Bethany Patten
has joined the Perseus Books Group as International
Sales Manager. She was previously a manager of special
markets at the Time Warner Book Group. Amie
Munro joins the company in the “newly
defined position” of Domestic Rights Manager. She was
most recently a Marketing Manager at Bulfinch.
They report to Carolyn Savarese. . . .
John Loudon
has resigned as executive editor at Harper SanFrancisco
after 27 years at the company and will continue to work
independently for the imprint as an Editor at Large,
along with acquiring for other publishers and serving
as a consultant.
Ron Davis
has joined Sterling Publishing as VP, Special
Sales. He was previously at S&S. Davis takes over
from Martin Schamus, who has been named SVP,
New Business Development. Chris Grimm has left
S&S after four years, most recently as Director
of Planning and Distribution in the Distributor Sales
and Retail Marketing Division. Prior to moving to S&S,
he spent 10 years in the BDD sales organization. He
can be reached at Fchrisgrimm@aol.com
and at (203) 829-2727.
Promotions
Roger Freet
has been named a Senior Editor for Harper San Francisco.
Kate Travers has been promoted to Editor of Harper
Perennial.
At Simon &
Schuster, Jen Bergstrom has been promoted to
Publisher of the Simon Spotlight Entertainment and Simon
Spotlight imprints, still reporting to Robin Corey
for Spotlight and to Rick Richter for the entertainment
line.
Duly
Noted
Bowker-owned market
research firm Simba held a webinar on July 15
to discuss its recent report on the book market, “Business
of Consumer Book Publishing 2004” (available at www.simbanet.com).
Among the trends discussed at the webinar were the increasing
popularity of graphic novels. Included in this year’s
report are four new categories: contemporary literary
fiction; classic literary fiction; graphic novels; and
politics/current events.
• PEN
announces State of Emergency: Unconventional Readings,
with Laurie Anderson, Paul Auster, Russell Banks, Michael
Cunningham, Don DeLillo, Joan Didion, Ariel Dorfman,
Jonathan Safran Foer, Barbara Goldsmith, A. M. Homes,
A. E. Hotchner, Margo Jefferson, Edward P. Jones, Walter
Dean Myers, Salman Rushdie, Monique Truong, Kurt Vonnegut,
& Eve Ensler. It will be held Wednesday, Aug. 4,
at 7 p.m., at The Great Hall at Cooper Union, 7 East
7th Street at Third Avenue. Admission is free. For more
information, call (212) 334-1660 x107 or see www.pen.org.
• The Rona
Jaffe Foundation will host its 10th Annual Writers’
Awards Sept. 30, at 6-8 p.m. at the Lotos Club.
Parties
The Overlook
Press presented a Slide show and lecture at The
Museum of Natural History to announce the publication
of Christopher Ondaatje’s Hemingway in Africa:
The Last Safari. It was followed on July 28 by a publication
party hosted by Peter Mayer at his home. The
guest list included Explorers Club members Jeff Stolzer
and Nicci Young, HC’s Jane Friedman, Putnam’s
Carole Baron, and super lawyer Martin Garbus.
Mazel Tov
Welcome to June
Barrett Cook-Selman, the child that literary agent Ira
Silverberg helped create, who was born on June 11,
weighing in at 8 lbs. 5 ozs.
©2004
Publishing Trends
