PEOPLE
HarperCollins has announced the long-awaited restructuring of its sales department: Josh Marwell has been named SVP Sales, with specific responsibility for Harper Trade Adult and overall corporate responsibility for special sales and sales operations (Business Manager Jeff Meltzer will report to him). Andrea Pappenheimer, SVP Sales, Children’s Publishing, and George Bick, VP Sales Morrow/Avon, will assume overall responsibility for their lines. All three will report to COO Glenn D’Agnes with dotted line reporting to their respective divisional heads. In addition, Jeff Hobbs, recently named head of sales for Harper San Francisco, will report to Marwell. Bick will continue to sell all publishing lines into the mass merchandisers.
Paul Bresnick, most recently at LiveReads and Morrow, is joining Michael Carlisle as an affiliate agent. He will continue to do editorial work for other clients. In the last year Carlisle & Co. has had a number of agents who have worked on an affiliate basis. Two, Marly Rusoff and Larry Chilnick, have since left (Rusoff to start her own agency, Chilnick to focus on packaging), while two others — Don Lamm and Bob Bernstein — are still involved. Lamm helped bring in David Kennedy’s American Pageant series and Bob Sutton’s Weird Ideas that Work, which will be published by The Free Press.
More movement in the children’s book arena: Victoria Welles has been named Editorial Director of the new Bloomsbury USA juvenile book division. She comes from Viking Children’s books. . . . Bonnie Bader has been named Editor in Chief of Grosset. She was Editorial Director at Golden. . . . Kathy Dawson has been promoted to Executive Editor of GP Putnam’s Children’s Books. She was most recently Senior Editor. Meanwhile, David Ford, founding President/CEO of Candlewick Press, has sold his flourishing bookshop in Georgia and will be moving to NY, “eager for a new challenge.” He can be reached at gjford1@bellsouth.net.
Christina Harcar goes to St. Martin’s as Director of Subsidiary Rights. She was previously at Random House Audio. . . . Laura Matthews has been named Deputy Editor of Martha Stewart Living. She was previously Senior Editor at GP Putnam . . . . Jeannette Watson has returned to bookselling with her acquisition of the Lenox Hill Bookstore, where she has worked off and on since starting her own Books & Co. imprint at Turtle Point Press, following the closing of the eponymous bookstore in 1997. . . Yulia Borodyanskaya has been named Subsidiary Rights Manager at Newmarket Press. She was previously an account executive at rightscenter.com, and before that, Foreign Rights Associate for Doubleday. . . . Hugh Shiebler has been named Sales Manager for Barrons. He was most recently at Zagat, and Barefoot Books, and before that, at Globe Pequot . . . . Skip Fischer has been named CEO of DK U.S., following the departure of Danny Gurr last month. He reports primarily to David Shanks, with a secondary reporting line to Anthony Forbes Watson, CEO of The Penguin Group [UK]. Meanwhile, Shanks announced that Liz Perl has been promoted to the position of Vice President Director of Marketing, Trade Paperbacks for the Berkley Publishing Group and NAL. She had previously been named Director of Marketing for Riverhead Trade Paperbacks. . . . Heather Byer has left Contentville, where she was Executive Editor, and is doing freelance book editing for McGraw-Hill’s college division, script reading for USA Films, and freelance magazine writing. She is reachable at heathbyer@earthlink.net.
Gotham Scouting Partners, formed by May Wuthrich in 1998, has added Terry Guerin (ex-Tapestry Films) as a partner, and DW Gibson as a scouting associate. Recent acquisitions by clients include Martin Dugard’s Blood Brothers, Craig Holden’s Jazz Bird, and Hodding Carter’s Viking Voyage.
Victoria Barnsley, Chief Executive Officer and Publisher at HarperCollins UK, announced that it is restructuring its UK publishing divisions into two halves, each with its own managing director. Amanda Ridout, currently the Managing Director of Headline, will become MD of General Books, which will combine the Trade Division, Fourth Estate, Thorsons, and Children’s. Thomas Webster, currently Publishing Director of Oxford University Press, will become MD of Collins, comprising Cartographic, Dictionaries, Education, and Reference.
DEALS
Gerry Howard bought a “fun” book (what other kinds are there, on this subject?) about bartending, “a kind of Kitchen Confidential of the bar world,” we’re told by Toby Checchini from Bill Clegg at his newish agency (Burnes & Clegg).
DULY NOTED
The Rights Report, published by Whitaker (publishers of The Bookseller), has announced that it has ceased publication of the printed version. Launched at Frankfurt 1999 as a report on international rights transaction in books, film, and TV, it recently “has proved impossible to convert high acclamation to a level of sales revenue needed for us to continue our extensive network of international correspondents. . . .” However, a web-based service “offering a database of rights stories and information” is still available to the publication’s subscribers. In other Whitaker news, veteran Louis Baum has returned to the company, after a foray into the dotcom world.
• Marjorie Scardino’s latest letter to employees reviews the first-six-month results, which have disappointed investors. She writes: “Penguin’s core publishing in the US and the UK is in good shape, too — more bestsellers than ever, and more successful new authors. Australia, where we have a sizeable business, has instigated a new tax on books, so that’s hurting in the short run, but if I know our crowd there, they’ll work out a way to counteract the pain. Dorling Kindersley is turning out to be a great addition not only to Penguin, but also to Pearson Education, who can use the DK brilliance for creating books you just can’t resist reading to make textbooks just as compelling. DK has quickly combined some of its operations with Penguin while still keeping its own special personality. Just wait until you see the first in the newest DK line, Animal, a giant encyclopedia of wildlife — out in the autumn.”
• Target Marketing’s Denny Hatch, writing of “The Rise and Fall of Time-Life Books,” in the June/July issue, wonders what went awry with a company started in 1960 whose “titanic successes” made the division the company’s most profitable for several years. When Time-Life Books closed its doors this past January, Hank Steuver of The Washington Post wrote that it was “an early triumph of direct marketing, selling 30 million books a year at its zenith. That’s a lot of Middle American coffee tables.” Hatch comes up with some hypotheses about what happened to the company, suggesting that aggressive offers to would-be subscribers ended up bringing in worse customers who dropped out without buying or paying. Then, as Time-Life Music became more profitable, all the development money went into that division, rather than book development. Finally, “All these books were sold by stroking the intellectual egos of consumers, but they were bought as furniture — something warm and impressive to fill empty bookshelves in order to achieve respect and affirmation.” But the allure of information on an installment basis palled as the web offered more opportunities to find the information fast, and for free. Belt tightening and layoffs didn’t help stem the flow of red ink, and the merger of AOL and Time Warner ensured the division’s demise.
• EPM Communications, publisher of The Licensing Letter, just released its annual Licensed Property Benchmarking Survey. The book covers all sorts of licensing, but it’s no surprise that Literary Properties, a catchall that includes books and their characters, tend to have a much longer licensing life than other properties. But this is an area driven by both smaller properties — 59% have generated sales of licensed merchandise that are less than $10 million over their lifetime — and some behemoths that have generated $100 million or more. Books (mostly children’s) account for roughly half of all properties, but each segment — books, comic books, and comic strips — has an unusually high 10% of properties that are over the $100 million mark. Contact EPM at info@epmcom.com or call 212 941-0099.
MAZELTOV
Congratulations to Random’s Peter Olson and Candace Carpenter, Chair of iVillage, who will marry September 8.
