PEOPLE
Steve Parr has been named CEO of Abrams, following the departure of Mark Magowan and Alan Rutsky (along with two dozen others) at the end of the year. He was most recently with Emap. . . . After 14 years at Harcourt, Louise Pelan, VP and Publisher of Children’s Books, is taking early retirement in March. . . . Kimberly Whalen has just been hired at Trident Media Group as MD of Foreign Rights. She was previously at the Rotrosen Agency. . . . Peter Garlid leaves Mondadori, where he has headed up the New York office. The staff, along with Mondadori Printing’s US reps, will now report directly to Italy. Garlid will become an independent rights sales rep, with Mondadori as a client.
Skip Fischer, who had been, briefly, COO of DK, has left. Reporting responsibilities are now shared by Therese Burke, Chuck Lang, and Dorothy Regan. Meanwhile, Audrey Puzzo, most recently of subrights.com, and previously at Pocket, has been hired to handle sub rights. She reports to Lang. . . . PW reports that Jon Galassi will become president and publisher of FSG and will relinquish his title of Editor-in-Chief to John Glusman. Amy Scheibe, who left Doubleday in December, has been named a Senior Editor at the Free Press. She reports to Dominick Anfuso and begins February 4.
Tracy Howell has left Random House to join the Gernert Agency. Linda Pennell, RH Rights Director, will now assume responsibility for the foreign rights department as well. Meanwhile, Luann Walther has hired Angeli Singh as an editor at Vintage/Anchor, from Mary Anne Thompson Associates. And Harcourt’s publisher, Andre Bernard, has hired Da Capo’s Executive Editor Andrea Schulz as Senior Editor.
Paulist Press has hired Robert Welsch as Director of Sales and Marketing. Welsch had been Editorial Director of Bookspan’s One Spirit Book Club. Ellen Sibley has been promoted to President and Publisher of Barron’s Educational Series. She was EVP. . . . Pam Abrams has joined Scholastic as Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of Scholastic Parent and Family Publishing. Before joining Scholastic, Abrams was Vice President and Editorial Director of eToys.com. Abrams replaces Judsen Culbreth, who has been named Vice President and Editorial Director of Scholastic Family Custom Publishing.
Lucinda Karter, most recently of rightscenter.com, has been named director of The French Publishers Agency, replacing Kathryn Nanovic Morlet. . . . Jim Clark has retired as Director of University of California Press. . . . And with the closing of Coliseum Books, Pat Sado can now be reached at (212) 663-4866.
DULY NOTED
The Licensing Letter reports that worldwide retail sales of licensed products dropped 5% in 2001, to $109 billion. The US, which represents two thirds of that total, dropped 5%, while Japan’s sales dropped 13%, followed by Eastern Europe, with a 10% falloff. Publishing related licensed products dropped 8% in the US and Canada, to $4.7 billion. Meanwhile, respondents to TLL’s Annual Business Survey forecast a 2.4% drop for the licensing business in 2002, though licensors — not surprisingly — were more bullish than other respondents, predicting a 3% increase. More information can be found at www.epmcom.com.
• Marshall Editions, which is in the process of being sold by its current owners, Just Group, parent company of Mediakey, has offers in from Chrysalis Books (the folks who bought Pavilion), Octopus (via Hachette, now on an acquisitions spree), and Andromeda (owned by Media Invest). A deal is expected to be announced shortly.
• Chris Kerr, PT’s tireless correspondent, reports from the ALA winter conference that it was wet and cold in New Orleans, and librarians were in “short supply.” But there was “much chat about projected cut-backs in library funding which will impact acquisitions, hours, and staffing. Publishers were similarly desultory, although this is more attributable to the wreckage of last year’s retail results.” The Blackwell representative claimed that the press leaks about the family wishing to dump the publishing holdings were false, as the charter requires a 3/4 vote to amend before holdings can be proposed for sale, and no “side” has remotely close to half.
• Distributor Trafalgar Square’s Paul Feldstein reports that he’s just picked up US distribution for UK publisher Aurum Press, as well as Screenpress Books. Their 40-odd distribution clients include most of the major UK imprints, among them Random House/Transworld, Orion, HarperCollins, and Bloomsbury.
FEBRUARY DATES
NYU is hosting information sessions for its M.S. in Publishing on Feb. 7, 6-8 pm, and March 13, 6-8 pm. Both will be held at the NYU Midtown Center, 11 West 42nd Street, 4th Floor. Call (212) 998-7200.
• BookTech 2002 is set for Feb. 11-13 at the Hilton.
• Books for a Better Life is scheduled for Feb. 12 at the Millennium Broadway. Call (212) 463-7787, ext. 3043.
• The AAP’s annual meeting will take place on Feb. 27-28 at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC, as usual.
• Before he became the eminent Grove Press publisher that the world knows, Barney Rosset was a photographer. His show “War Photographs: China in Conflict 1944-1945” will be on view at the Janos Gat Gallery, 1100 Madison Avenue (82nd Street). Opening on Feb. 12, 6-9 pm.
PARTIES
On January 16, Sara Nelson held a publication party for her friend Bob Sabbag for his latest (from Little, Brown), Loaded: A Misadventure on the Marijuana Trail. Also present were Grove Atlantic’s Morgan Entriken and Canongate’s Jamie Byng — both of whom are the publishers of Sabbag’s first and now classic Snowblind. Nelson has resigned from Book Publishing Report/Primedia (which had taken over Inside.com following Steve Brill’s departure) to become Senior Contributing Editor, Books at Glamour. She will also be writing the book she just sold (via IMG’s Reiter) to Penguin Putnam. She’s at Sara_Nelson@condenast.com. Earlier in January Inside.com’s David Carr was named Media Reporter and Lorne Manly Deputy Media Editor of The NY Times.
• Overlook Press, the Museum of TV & Radio, and Harry Evans co-hosted a publication party for BBC Reports: “On America, Its Allies and Enemies and the Counterattack on Terrorism” at the museum on Feb. 23. Among the luminaries in attendance were Jane Friedman and Lewis Lapham.
KNOW THY CUSTOMER
The Book Reporter (bookreporter.com) surveyed its loyal visitors recently, and found some interesting stats. For one thing, these are serious book lovers: 39% buy one or two books in a typical month, with 28% buying 3-4 books (37% say they read 3-5 books a month). 57% buy one or more books online in a typical month (remember, this is an online poll). 21% get information about books from local newspapers, 15% from The NY Times, and 8.7% from Oprah. While 33% go to Amazon to learn about books (and 18% to BN.com and 4.8% to Powells — the only other online retailer mentioned — more than half visit bookstores in a typical month. 55% claim they have visited author websites in the past three months. But 85% have never read an e-book on any device, including Palm and PC. In a separate survey, bookreporter’s readinggroupguides.com looked at the mammoth but shadowy universe of reading groups. Among their respondents, 46% meet at members’ houses, while 12% meet at the library, anywhere from 8-12 times a year. While 47% said the group votes on the books to be read, 30% said that in their group, each member chooses a title. Bestseller fiction, literary fiction and biography/memoirs were the top three categories, and though for 27% paperbacks were the format of choice, 62% said that the format was not important — a response that flies in the face of many publishers’ experience. Where do they get their books? 20.5% go to the chains, 18% borrow them from the library, and the same number — 6.4% — get them either from an independent or an online retailer. But listen up: 30% said they’d be interested in buying books in bulk, if they could get a discount of 30% or more.
