PEOPLE
Lots of HarperCollins news, beginning with Larry Ashmead’s announcement that he will retire as of the end of 2001. He turns 69 next July 4, and with “almost all my longtime authors publishing their books next year,” including Tony Hillerman, Simon Winchester, Susan Forward, and Susan Isaacs — not to mention a newer Ashmead acquisition, Michael Korda’s (Country Matters) — the time seemed right.
Meantime, Alison Devlin has left DK to become Exec. Dir. of Publicity at HarperCollins Children’s, and Pam Lutz, from Random, has replaced Bill Boedeker. Martha Reddington has been named VP Special Markets at HarperCollins, replacing Frank Foschetta, who left to become SVP Publishing at Marvel Enterprises. He has hired Lisa Dolin (ex-Morrow special sales) as Publishing Director. And Lisa Queen, formerly Editor-in-Chief of Morrow, has taken David Chalfant’s old job at IMG. Chalfant, meanwhile, has been named SVP Business Development at Siegelgale, where he will be in charge of brand management and extension for media, publishing and entertainment. The company’s clients include The Industry Standard, Reciprocal, Scholastic, and The College Board.
As has been reported over the last few weeks, OneBigTable is shrinking fast, and the principals, including Arthur Samuelson, ex-publisher of Schocken, are looking for a job. (The New York Post insists on referring to Arthur and wife Molly as “the O’Neills”.) . . . Judy Klein has left Bertelsmann’s Booksonline, where she was Editor-in-Chief, to travel. She will go to Africa and from there, possibly to “India and Nepal, then maybe Southeast Asia, wherever my itchy feet take me for the next four months.” . . . Linda Stormes has gone to Book Magazine and, as of October 2 will be managing sales and advertising, with an emphasis on the publishing world. . . . Doubleday’s Art Director, Mario Pulice, went to Little, Brown. . . . Anne Messitte has been appointed VP Publisher, Vintage and Anchor Books, effective immediately. She was previously VP Associate Publisher.
Millbrook’s deal to buy DK Ink has fallen through (for now), but they have hired Knopf’s Simon Boughton as publisher. And Neal Porter is setting himself up as a consultant/packager. The company is Porterhouse, “rare books, well done.” He may be reached at (212) 765- 4774; porterhouse@earthlink.net.
Sandra Zane, formerly Subsidiary/ Foreign Rights Manager at the Dijkstra Agency, has relocated to NY from California to join Franklin & Siegal Associates. . . . Bill Goldstein, Books Editor of NYT Online has been given additional responsibilities. He will oversee the relaunch of the cultural site, and beginning October 6, will review books weekly on NBC Today in NY. . . . Steven Sussman, previously Publisher of Exley Giftbooks and before that, Dorling Kindersley, has opened Siegel/Sussman, a consulting, marketing and sales company . . . . Chip Lovitt, erstwhile of Grolier, has been named Senior Editor of Readers Digest Children’s Books.
Since Abrams bought STC, there had been several casualties, reported in this very newsletter. But now we hear that the top people who were laid off by Abrams have been rehired to their old positions by their French owner, headed by Herve de la Martinière, and that, other than on day-to-day budgeting issues, the company now reports directly to France. An official announcement is forthcoming.
DEALS
Following Bookspan/BOMC’s announcement that it would sell Stephen King’s Secret Windows: Essays and Fiction on the Craft of Writing exclusively as a dual main selection, we asked Executive Editor Arthur Goldwag how this came about. He tells us via email: “This was one of those fortuitous inspirations that began as wishful thinking and then surprised everyone by actually coming to pass. On Writing had us all buzzing about what a good nonfiction writer King is and how welcome a gathering of his occasional essays might be; how intriguing it would be to see some of his juvenilia; how quirky and witty and subversive an extemporaneous speaker he is and how much his fans might appreciate having his best lectures and interviews preserved between hard covers; how brilliant and under-read the chapter on horror fiction in Danse Macabre is and how worthy of reprinting; etc., etc. To our delight, everyone that might have hindered the project helped us instead: Stephen King gave us his blessing (and access to archival material), Susan Moldow and Arthur Greene [King’s agent] were enormously cooperative, Peter Straub wrote an amazing introduction. Kathy Kiernan, BOMC’s director of Book Development, did the lion’s share of research and generally shaped the book. We’re very proud of the result.”. . .
Marshall Editions will become the exclusive brand licensor outside of the US for all children’s books from Discovery Channel and Animal Planet. Dutton publishes in the US.
EVENTS
Well, here he comes again! To coincide with the publication of André Schiffrin’s The Business of Books, Verso’s publisher Colin Robinson organized a panel discussion for the evening of September 29 (Rosh Hashanah!) at the Deutsches Haus (!), to air the grievances which led to Schiffrin’s departure from Pantheon and the founding of The New Press ten years ago. As this coincided with Publishing Trends’ deadline, we asked the panelists to give us a preview:
Harper’s Lewis Lapham is concerned that too many books are being published, and that nothing is failing to find some sort of distribution. He describes the US as a “reasonably literate” society but not a “literary” one. Columbia U. Press’s Bill Strachan takes exception to Shiffrin’s criticism that university presses have gone “commercial.” He agrees that there has been a shift within trade publishing, where each book’s, rather than the list’s, profitability has become the norm, but thinks university presses have not shirked their responsibility to publish certain kinds of challenging titles that trade publishers have been forced to abandon.
All shared the concern that conglomeration in general in the US and globally has led to a uniformity and lack of diversity. And Verso’s Robinson laments that, the larger the conglomerates and the more noise they are able to make with their increased and available marketing dollars, the more likely the small voices of the independent publishers will be drowned out. And, he adds, we live in a very noisy world as it is.
CYBER
Elliott Masie, who runs Techlearn, a company that covers online education, recently posted the following: “A Virtual Day at a Trade Show: Today, as I write this edition of TRENDS, I am experimenting with a new activity: working a Trade Show Booth by Video. For the entire day, I will be in the MASIE Center booth at the Lakewood OLLO event in Denver. My staff are on-site but I am in my office, connected by video-conference, to do “booth duty.” Folks that I know from the industry are stopping by, asking questions and I am in the office, relaxing and sleeping in my own bed tonight. Cool!” When Publishing Trends queried him about this emerging trend, he wrote back: “I think that we are on the starting end… as I respond to you, my booth is set up in Denver and I am the “talent” in the booth… and much better traffic than surrounding booths.” Is it, we wonder, too late to cancel our Frankfurt reservations?
DULY NOTED
In celebration of Grove’s fiftieth anniversary, Morgan Entrekin, Grove/Atlantic’s Publisher, has written a paean to the company and its founder, Barney Rosset, in the publisher’s winter catalog. Entrekin reminds the reader that Grove published a string of first amendment landmarks, from Lady Chatterly’s Lover to Tropic of Cancer and Naked Lunch, but also such works as John Rechy’s City of Night, Che Guevara’s diaries and Timothy Leary’s Jail Notes, and the first works of Tom Stoppard, David Mamet and Harold Pinter. Throughout the catalog there are pieces about iconic writers written by current and well-known Grove authors — Dennis Cooper on Jean Genet; Darcey Steinke on Henry Miller; Larry Kramer on D.H. Lawrence; etc. All in all, it is a memorable catalog.
