As PowerfulMedia’s Inside.com launches in the next week(s), look for Publishing Trends columns, which will run periodically during the month.
PEOPLE
Maureen Golden is leaving Workman Publishing at the end of May, after less than nine months in the company. Golden was previously at B&N. . . Also leaving in late May is Paula Duffy, who has been Publisher of The Free Press for the last three years, to become Director of the University of Chicago Press effective August 1. Meanwhile Senior Editor Paul Golob is leaving The Free Press to join the staff of The New York Times as an editor on the op-ed page. His responsibilities will include assigning, soliciting, and editing pieces to appear in the NYT. Ever since it became known that Doreen Carvajal was leaving the Times book beat for the culture desk and that Dave Smith was looking for a replacement, it seems as though she’s been writing more than ever. When called for an update, Smith gave a jovial “no comment.” . . . Steve Zeitchik will be leaving PW Daily and moving to San Francisco to be an editor at the Industry Standard.
Michael Fragnito, most recently at Viking Penguin, has gone to B&N to oversee ebooks. Meanwhile, Christopher Sweet was named Editor in Chief of Viking Studio. He was previously Executive Editor. . . Lisa Rasmussen has been appointed President and Publisher of Dorchester Publishing. She was previously Director of Sales at Avon.
Frances Coady, who is currently running Picador UK, will be the new chief of Picador US (subject to a green card, presumably), replacing George Witte. . . Angus Killick has been named VP Marketing for the Penguin Putnam Young Readers Division, replacing Audrey Cusson, who has left to run a bookstore in Woodstock, NY (see PT 4/00). He recently joined the company, after working for DK Ink. Sandee Yuen, former Associate Director of Publicity at Doubleday, has been named Director of Marketing and Publicity at Bloomsbury USA. . . Tony Chirico has been appointed to the newly created position of EVP, COO of the Knopf Publishing Group, giving him a greater role in the group’s imprints. He was previously EVP, Director of Operations. . . Libby McGuire was named Publishing Manager at Little Random. She was national Accounts Manager at S&S. . . .
Steven Sussman, most recent of Exley Giftbooks, has established Sonschein Sales with Paul Sheinberg of Granddreams. They will be selling 30 proprietary titles into the retail marketplace for display marketer DSMaxx. They will also represent titles from Tormont and Robert Frederick, as well as Granddreams and their own imprint, Better Than Broccoli Books, and have established their own sales force and will service all levels of retail (mass market, drugstores, traditional trade, etc.).
VIRTUAL PEOPLE
Long time Amazon.com fixture, and now mom-to-be Mary Engstrom Morouse has left the company. Meanwhile, Carl Gish, formerly general manager (with Libby Johnson McKee) of books has moved on to consumer electronics. Libby is sailing around the world with her husband. Lyn Blake has taken over the books business and, sources tell us, is doing a great job. Speaking of sources, the Daily News reports that Jeff Bezos has bought an apartment on Central Park West, NYC, for a modest $7.5 mil.
Jack Hoeft, former CEO of Bantam Doubleday Dell, is now President and CEO of MedHelp.com, a b2b site in the healthcare field. . . Becky Michaels, asst Dir of Advertising and Promotion at Little Brown has just resigned to join perksforyou.com, which launches in August. . . Justin Schwartz, formerly of HarperCollins, has become Senior Editor at Lechters.com, the offshoot of the housewares store whose CEO is now David Cully from B&N. . . David Hisbrook is at Xlibris. He was most recently at B&N.
DEALS
Hyperion’s Leigh Haber topped Ballantine in an auction for the novel Carter Beats the Devil, which agent Susan Golomb sold for a cool $687,500 . . . Co-authors Matt Drudge and Julia Phillips engineered their $300,000 deal with NAL’s Louise Burke by themselves, as, according to Phillips, their agents didn’t “get” it. Sources from the house reportedly said the ms was “too hip, too funny” (although the reader admitted not being familiar with The Drudge Report). Also rumored is a minimum 50,000 first printing with the in-house assertion that it should be a LOT higher as pub date approaches and the terrible twosome bring their own marketing skills to bear. . . .
The Rights Report says Ebury Press will publish a book by Mark McCrum on Castaway 2000, the original BBC television series about a group of volunteers who spend a year on the remote island of Taransay. The series has a UK viewership of nine million, and is the model for several US shows being spawned on equally remote islands. Julian Alexander at Lucas Alexander Whitley sold the book for a “six figure” sum.
Holt’s Denise Cronin reports that after Stacy Schiff won the Pulitzer for Vera, UK rights to Ben Franklin in Paris, Schiff’s next magnum opus, have been sold to Bloomsbury. There were seven publishers in the auction, which ended with four of them submitting sealed bids, with Bloomsbury topping them all.
DULY NOTED
As though buying A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius for the most $$ Vintage has ever paid for a reprint ($1.4 mil.) weren’t enough, Marty Asher, Editor in Chief of Vintage, now gets to experience being a Knopf publishee. His own novel, Boomer, comes out May 10, with a first run of 25,000, and second serial rights have already been sold to Modern Maturity (no joke — they claim a readership of 20 million). A tour is planned, and in New York and Chicago Asher will be joined by Chip Kyd, who designed and illustrated the book. It is, btw, a must see/must read. . .
Books Update from NYTimes.com is a new email that will be sent out weekly to registrants. The email includes NYTBR highlights, book-related news, and links to book-related features at nytimes.com (audio interviews with authors, first chapters, etc.), and will include information about new books coming into the stores. Register at http://email. nytimes.com.
Themestream hopes to be the Internet’s source for articles, information, and gear related to consumers’ personal interests. Part vanity epublisher, part clipping service, and part etailer (hence the “gear”), the site claims to have 1,700 topic areas. It’s got close ties to Netscape (the management team came from there), and S&S as an early content source.
PARTIES
Francine Prose celebrated the publication of her new novel — an academic satire called Blue Angel (yes, like the movie, which plays a role in the plot) — at, where else, the University Club. Our correspondent writes that Prose was surrounded by a host of media types — Vanity Fair’s Wayne Lawson, Elle’s Pat Tower, the TBR’s Michael Anderson, The Daily News’ Celia McGee, Inside.com’s Sara Nelson — as well as authors Patricia Bosworth, Honor Moore, A.M. Homes, and Robert Polito. Notable in her absence was Prose’s longtime editor Sarah Bershtel — well, longtime until agent Denise Shannon moved Prose to Robert Jones of HarperCollins. Prose’s numbers have apparently improved dramatically.
MAZELTOV
To Wendy Weil, on a Big Birthday, and many more to come! The agent who boasts among her authors Alice Walker and Fannie Flagg celebrated in style with a party which included clients and friends. And happy birthday to agent Robin Straus, also celebrating an important decade (not the same one, though) in style.
WE DIDN’T KNOW WE NEEDED THEM
Four technologies we discovered in April: HP’s PocketPC Jornada, the newly introduced Palm-sized Windows CE-run handheld. The Clear Type we’ve been hearing so much about makes reading a breeze. . . Unlike earlier iterations, the CardScan 500 for Palm Pilots and PCs picks up data accurately, and displays it in the original format in the electronic rolodex it creates in your PC. However, when you want to transfer it to your handheld, the data is reformatted to conform to that program’s fields. . . Vindigo is a free application that was created with the NYT’s online site, New York Today. Download this to your Palm Pilot and every time you hot sync, info on restaurants, movies, shopping, etc. is updated. . . Publisherslunch.com was launched this month by Michael Cader of Cader Books, with useful links to the book pages of newspapers and magazines; publishing stories; and top news items. There are, however, some egregious typos, including the misspelling of the publishing industry’s trade journal, listed here as “Publishers Weakly.”
