PEOPLE
Mark Pattis, who had been CEO of Tribune Education, but left in March, right before the division was put on the market (it was just sold to McGraw–Hill), has become an investor. He is a partner in Next Chapter Holdings, a company that invests in a number of areas, including books, magazines, and digital publishing.
Following the announcement that Harcourt had hired Goldman, Sachs to (maybe) sell the company, word comes that Michael Barson, just-appointed Director of Publishing and Advertising for adult books, has reconsidered and is not moving. He had come from Putnam, where he was Assoc. Dir. of Publicity. No word yet on Ann Patty, who was just hired as Executive Editor, Adult Books, working part time, and complementing the upscale fiction of Drenka Willen and nonfiction tastes of Jane Isay.
George Bick moves to HarperCollins as VP Dir. of Sales for Morrow/Avon, barely a year after arriving at Pocket. Elisabeth Kerr has left HarperCollins for Norton where she fills the Foreign Rights Manager post vacated by Lucinda Karter, who went to Rightscenter.com (PT 6/00).
Larry Chilnick, writer and packager (of the bestselling The Recipe Hall of Fame Cookbook), and formerly of Auerbach and QVC, has gone to Carlisle & Co. as an agent to expand and develop category nonfiction (diet, health, cookbooks, etc.) and as CFO. Marly Rusoff, formerly Assoc. Publisher of Morrow, has set up an “affiliate” relationship with Carlisle & Co. She continues to work with authorsonline.com and booktech on branding, new business development, and marketing.
Alan Smagler has been named Acting Publisher of S&S Children’s while the search for Rick Richter’s replacement (he’s now President of Sales for S&S) continues. . . . The ax has fallen at Routledge. Publisher Ken Wright is out, as is Publishing Director Heidi Freund. . . . Jennifer Landers, Hyperion’s Publicity Director, has left publishing for — not a dot-com, but a real advertising agency (though they do web work). . . . Gay Bryant has returned from three years down under working for Murdoch’s magazines. She is currently working at Hachette Custom magazines and may be reached at 212 560-2156. . . . Meryl Earl has been named Subsidiary Rights Director at Kensington Publishing signaling her return after the bankruptcy of Carol Publishing. Kensington has acquired the assets of Carol and will continue to publish these titles grouped under the Citadel imprint. . . . Ralf Daab, CEO of Konemann US, has resigned and will return to Germany where he will assume the post of head of worldwide book sales for te Neues publishing.
VIRTUAL PEOPLE
Walter Walker has left S&S for Reciprocal, where he is VP, Publishers Relations. . . . Emily Heckman has left Pocket, where she was Executive Editor, to set up the New York office and become Assoc. VP, Publishing Alliances for Xlibris. . . . Amy Metsch, formerly of Franklin & Siegal, has joined Questia Media as Business Development Manager, Trade Publishing. . . . netLibrary opened a Publisher Relations Office in New York, hiring Linda C. Howey to run the shop.
DEALS
Bantam pre-empted Dr. Tracy Gaudet’s Consciously Female for $1 million in a two-book deal. The agent is Doe Coover . . . . Kathy Robbins sold David Denby’s book to Little, Brown’s Sarah Crichton for something north of $500K. Ironically, the subject of the book is . . . money. And while on the subject of L,B, Michael Pietsch bought .Bomb by David Kuo (Glen Hartley, agent), for another $500K+ in a robust auction. It is a nonfiction account of the downfall of an internet company, ValueAmerica. Kuo was an executive at the company.
Eileen Goudge just negotiated a three-book deal with her publisher, Viking (Molly Stern is the editor). This trilogy will take place in a mythical town that Goudge has created. Writer’s House agent Susan Ginsburg says her publisher, which paid a “hefty seven figures” for the trilogy, is very happy with Goudge’s most recent book, Second Silence, which is selling at twice the rate of her last book, One Last Dance, when it was published in hardcover.
DULY NOTED
In The Knowledge Web: People Power — Fuel for the New Economy, a publication on the education market that comes out annually from Merrill Lynch’s Securities Research & Economics Group, and Equity Research Departments, we learned the following:
On average, each employee at the leading “New Economy” companies is “worth” $38 million based on market-cap-per-employee. In contrast, each employee at the leading “Old Economy” companies is worth about $689,000, or less than 2% of employee value at the New Economy companies.
When asked to choose which media to bring to a desert island, 33% of children ages 8-18 picked a computer with Internet access.
College students represent the single largest non-gender-based online demographic, constituting 24% of the total number of adult Internet users.
FIVE YEARS AGO IN PUBLISHING TRENDS
As we prepared the July 2000 issue of PT, we dared to look back at our 1995 issue for this month. Plus ça change — ain’t that the truth. The lead article is about the difficulty of finding reliable book biz stats (see this month’s Fact Attack). Then there’s the rundown on the Licensing Show, with “unhappiness having to do with contracts unfulfilled, promises broken, and hype just not up to the level required to generate adequate sales to meet royalty guarantees” (see this month’s Licensing, p. 3). And a piece about the New York Times’ coverage of books (see this month’s article about the Times and children’s books, p. 7). But the one thing that has changed is the faces — or at least, where they were, and are. Michael Jacobs, now SVP Trade Books at Scholastic, was on his way to The Free Press as publisher. Hearst’s Bill Wright was at Random, and — ever prescient — packager/entrepreneur Dan Weiss had entered into a joint venture (remember, 1995) to develop an online chat and games site for girls. The one constant? PW’s Daisy Maryles was celebrating her 30th anniversary at the magazine. Happy 35th, Daisy!
MAZELTOV
To Borders’ Phil Ollila and Marilyn Slankard, who were wed on June 24.
