PEOPLE
Paul Gottlieb has been named Executive Director of the Aperture Foundation. He leaves Abrams after 22 years, during which time he held the titles of Publisher, President, CEO, and most recently, Company Director and Vice Chairman of the La Martiniere Groupe. He begins August 1.
Brigitte Weeks is leaving Guideposts to become Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of Bookspan’s Crossings and Black Expressions book clubs. She has been at Guideposts since 1994, and was previously at Book-of-the-Month Club, before it merged with the Doubleday Clubs. Weeks replaces Michele Rapkin, who is moving to Doubleday to become Editor-in-Chief of its religious imprints. She, in turn, is succeeding Eric Major, who is retiring to England this summer.
Linda Pennell has resigned from Random House, where she has been Director of Subsidiary Rights, effective the end of May. At that time, she may be reached via email (lpennell51@ aol.com) or at (914) 238-1608. . . Anita Diggs has left Ballantine where she was Senior Editor in charge of One World. She had moved from Warner, when she was in publicity, two years earlier. She may be reached at (212) 531-1973, or at anitadiggs@aol.com. . . Picador Associate Publisher Melanie Fleishman is leaving the company and may be reached at fleishmanm@hotmail.com. . . As announced elsewhere, Kris Kliemann has left Fodor’s and Alison Gross has been named Publisher. Kliemann may be reached at kkliemann914@aol.com.
Amy Metsch, formerly of Questia, started at Random Audio as Senior Acquisitions Editor, reporting to Robert Allen (who, in turn, reports to Jenny Frost). . . Amy Gurney has joined Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman as of counsel. She has represented Yo-Yo Ma, Michael Jackson, and Jose Carreras, as well as Dreamworks SKG, Miramax Films, New Line Cinema and WalMart.
In children’s publishing: Houghton Mifflin has appointed Andrea Davis Pinkney as VP and Publisher of Houghton Mifflin’s juvenile books. She was Editoral Director of Hyperion Books for Children at Disney. . . Bernette Ford is leaving Scholastic, where she was the founder and VP/Editorial Director of Cartwheel Books for over twelve years. She will be an independent packager of children’s books, working on multicultural titles as well as books for the very young. After Memorial Day, she can be reached at her home office: (718) 434-3677 or bfordhome@aol.com. In other Scholastic news, Kate Nunn has been named Editor-in-Chief of the Children’s Press and Franklin Watts imprints. She was previously editorial director of Benchmark Books, an imprint of Marshall Cavendish. . . Joyce Stein has been named marketing Communications Manager at Innovative Kids USA, a publisher of educational/ interactive books. She was most recently Marketing Director at LKC (Larousse Kingfisher Chambers). . . Meanwhile, word is that Bertelsmann/Berryville, the US printer of record for the Harry Potter books, is planning to commit 50% more capacity to producing the next Harry Potter for Scholastic.
The lure of the book: Earlier in April Rob Weisbach went to S&S as an Editor-at-Large, after a hiatus of several years. Now Marion Maneker is leaving New York Magazine to become Editorial Director of HarperBusiness and an Executive Editor of HarperCollins trade. When asked about his prospective list, he emailed PT that “the future of the imprint is to broaden the idea of what a business book can be to include reportage, histories, memoirs, and books that make a provocative argument about the economic context that surrounds our social lives, and eventually anything of interest to millions of people who subscribe to the Wall Street Journal.”
As reported earlier, Penguin president David Wan will leave his current job to become president and CEO of Harvard Business School Press. He replaces Linda Doyle, who will join the school’s faculty. Meanwhile, Harvard Business Review Editor Suzy Wetlaufer has resigned.
Tricia Conley has joined Viking as Managing Editor. She was most recently Director of Communications at the Tilton School in NH, but had been at Penguin Putnam from 1995-1999. Tory Klose has been promoted to Executive Managing Editor at Viking. She has been at Viking since November 1997, and before that she was the President of K&N Bookworks, a small book packaging company.
DULY NOTED
According to Broadway’s Charlie Conrad, it all started with The Big Con. He and B’way Publisher Gerry Howard were discussing Howard’s republishing of the classic book by David Maurer, and Conrad happened to mention his favorite con man book, Catch Me If You Can. Looking for a copy to give Howard, Conrad discovered that it was OP. On to the web, and before long he had located the author, Frank Abagnale, and had contracted with him to reissue the book for a “reasonable” sum. Oh yes, Abagnale did mention that Dreamworks had recently optioned it, but this was one of many options that had been negotiated since its publication in 1980. Published by Broadway in August 2000, the reissue has sold almost 80,000 copies so far in its latest edition. And the movie, starring Tom Hanks, Leonardo Di Caprio, and Christopher Walken, and directed by Steven Spielberg (Abagnale has a cameo as a pilot), is scheduled for a Christmas Day release. It is currently filming in the New York area.
• President and Publisher Peter Mayer announced that Overlook Press has acquired Ardis Publishers, “the leading publisher of Russian literature in the English-speaking world.” The company, with a backlist of about 300 books, was acquired from cofounder Ellendea Proffer Teasley, widow of the founder Carl Proffer. Go to www.ardisbooks.com.
• Book Tech Magazine’s April issue highlights Dover Publications, which is now a part of Courier, its printer for the past 30-plus years. The publisher employs more than 180 people and has approximately 8,000 titles in print, 75 percent of them paperbacks. Over 2,000 titles are reprinted every year, in addition to 500 new titles. Book Tech mentions that Courier has significantly upgraded Dover’s technology: it has moved to computer-to-plate and operates on a digital workflow. It can produce runs as low as 1,000 but maintains efficiencies by printing multiple titles of books that have the same paper and trim size. What has not changed, though, is Dover’s nonreturnable policy — the reason, says Dover’s president Clarence Strowbridge, that its prices still run as low as a buck a book.
• The early birds who have signed up for Publishing Services Network’s new F.A.S.T. service (Fair Appointments Service Team) include (according to a principal) “a US literary agent, a UK book packager, a German editorial bureau, a UK picture library and a US comic book publisher. It’s a simple and inexpensive flat fee solution to the worry of filling your diaries with profitable meetings at the world’s major book fairs: BEA, Frankfurt, Bologna and London.” Contact Jim Sutton at (301) 371-7603 or go to Booth #2822 at Javits to meet Jim and his colleagues Gwyn Headley and Alan Greene.
PARTIES
PEN held its annual Gala on April 24 at the Pierre Hotel in New York City. Among those in attendance were Lauren Bacall, Jessye Norman, Ron Howard, Dan Rather, David Byrne, Joe Klein, Sylvia Nasar, David Remnick, George Plimpton, Amy Tan, and most of the industry machers. The benefit evening was co-chaired by Larry Kirshbaum, Toni Goodale (who also served as Master of Ceremonies), and Susan Lyne.
• At Carole Baron’s party for first novelist Hari Kunzru’s well-reviewed The Impressionist, on hand were B&N and B&N.com’s Jill Lamar and Brenda Marsh, BOMC’s Victoria Skurnick, BookSense’s Carl Lennertz, and new Pearson Chairman and CEO, John Makinson (formerly CFO) along with his UK and US agents and UK publisher, Simon Prosser of Hamish Hamilton.
• Lynn Goldberg hosted the event celebrating the reissue of James McCourt’s Mawrdew Czgowchwz by NY Review of Books. On hand were publisher Rea Hederman, agent Elaine Markson, press in the persons of Sarah Nelson, Celia McGee, and Marion Maneker (then at NY Magazine) and friends Joel Grey and John Waters.
• Party animal Peter Mayer fêted the publication of UK writer Geoff Nicholson’s ninth novel, Bedlam Burning, at his wife Inez Bon’s restaurant, NL.
