PEOPLE
Lots happening in the sales and distribution world: The big — though not unexpected — news is that, following Kristina Peterson’s departure from Simon & Schuster, Rick Richter has been named President of the S&S Children’s Publishing Division, a position he held prior to Peterson’s arrival. He is currently President of the S&S Sales & Distribution Division, a role that Larry Norton will take over. Norton was previously SVP of Sales & Distribution.
Other sales moves: Dana Baylor, VP Marketing and Distribution at Globe Pequot, says it’s time for a sabbatical and has resigned to do just that for the next six months (at least). . . Mary Albi, VP Sales & Marketing at Phaidon, has left the company in a restructuring which will have much of the company reporting to the UK home office. Meanwhile, Martha Reddington, VP Special Markets at HarperCollins, along with two other members of her department, is leaving the company in a reorganization. Email mp_reddington@msn.com.
After a brief stint at Harmony Books, Jake Morrissey has become the Managing Editor of comics at United Feature Syndicate in New York. He’ll be editing cartoons, including Peanuts, Dilbert, For Better or For Worse, Get Fuzzy, and “about 70 others.” He also plans to do some writing. . . Katie Hall has joined Harcourt as a Senior Editor. She was most recently at Random House. . . Lindley Boegehold has left Carlton Books New York and is joining Black Dog & Leventhal with the charge of developing their proprietary publishing business. Keith Allen Jones of Carlton in London has also left the company.
Anne Kostick joins STC as Senior Editor. She had been consulting with STC and previously was at VitaminShoppe. com and Workman. . . Andrea Spooner is joining Little, Brown Children’s publishing as Executive Editor. She was Editor-in-Chief of North-South Books’ SeaStar division, which she helped to launch. . . Penguin has lots of new hires, other than the newest and most talked about, Ann Godoff, and her Senior Editor, Scott Moyers. Susan Lehman was appointed Editor, Riverhead Books. She had been Senior Editor at Talk and Salon.com. Last month PT reported Sean McDonald’s departure from Nan Talese books to be a Senior Editor at Riverhead. Dave Zimmer has joined The Penguin Group as Manager of Corporate Communications, reporting to Marilyn Ducksworth. Most recently, he worked for Vivendi Universal in New York and Paris.
HarperCollins UK announced the appointment of Caroline Michel as MD and Publisher of the newly-created division of HarperPress, which is the name for the combined editorial, marketing, design, publicity, and rights teams for Flamingo, HarperCollins nonfiction, and Fourth Estate. Michel, who was Publisher of Vintage, and Deputy MD and Deputy Publisher of the CCV division of Random House, will report to Amanda Ridout. Christopher Potter has been promoted to the new position of Associate Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of HarperPress. He remains as Co-Publisher of Fourth Estate New York (with Dan Halpern at HC US), while buying for HarperPress across all imprints. Clive Priddle remains Publishing Director for the US.
Hanna Oterio has joined SparkNotes as Executive Editor, to spearhead its expansion into the K–8 Market. She was previously at Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, were she was Supervising Editor, and at Frank Schaffer, as Editorial Director.
Nancy Trypuc has moved from Penguin to St. Martin’s Press, where she is Director of Advertising & Promotion. She was handling advertising and promotion for Berkley/NAL.
PROMOTIONS
Tim Bakke has been promoted to VP Editorial Director of Creative Homeowner. He has been with the company for six years and was previously Editorial Director. . . Carol Morgan has been promoted to Publicity Director at Harry N. Abrams. She was Publicity Manager. She is the founder of Boston Literary Hour. . . Ben Morgan has been promoted to Marketing & Sales Associate at SparkNotes, reporting to Associate Publisher Robert Riger.
FEBRUARY DATES
The Small Press Center sponsors an Inside Publishing evening, wherein Christopher Lehmann-Haupt interviews Peter Mayer. The event, which begins at 6, with a reception following at 7:30, takes place at the Small Press Center on 20 W. 44th. For further information go to www.smallpress.org.
• At the Feb. 11 Books for a Better Life awards, retiring HarperCollins editor Larry Ashmead will be the first non-author to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, along with Suze Orman and Dr. Andrew Weil.
• AAP hosts its two-day conference, at which Oprah Winfrey will be honored, taking place February 26–28 at the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel in DC. The 2003 Annual Meeting for Smaller and Independent Publishers takes place immediately preceding the opening reception for the general meeting. Meanwhile, on February 3 – 5 the Professional / Scholarly Publishing Division’s Annual Conference takes place, also in DC. Go to www.publishers.org.
FROM THE FLOOR . . .
Our correspondent writes to PT that “Some 10,000 librarians made it to the new and improved Philadelphia for the Mid-Winter ALA (January 24 – 29). Traffic at booths on Sunday seemed light until the various ALA council meetings and lunches let out and then the floor was flooded with librarians eager for the many handouts. Most notable among them was Barnes & Noble.com’s mega tote bag which included an 8 oz. bar of chocolate — not to mention an extra 5% special show discount to launch ‘The Library Bookstore’ from BN.com. Using it, librarians can create a custom-built bookstore, buy online, and get bulk discounts. In preparation for the ALA’s main conference this summer in Toronto, one booth was taking free passport photos to prepare attendees for the border crossing. Penguin was very visible with their immense children’s offerings, but Dan Lundy manfully manned a booth dedicated to the relaunched Penguin Classics titles. Generally the show was short on books and long on furniture, fixtures, and databases. (Certainly the book-folk had spent nothing on display, while the tech types were positively resplendent.)”
DULY NOTED
Taking exception to a recent Marty Arnold column, Jeffrey Lependorf, Executive Director of CLMP, wrote the following in rebuttal, which hasn’t made it into the NYT as of PT’s closing, but which we thought we’d share with our readers.
“To the Editor: In “No Purebreds in Publishing” (Making Books, January 23) Martin Arnold states that “the reality is that there is no longer any such a thing as a purely literary publishing house.” In fact, America boasts a thriving community of independent publishers devoted to mission-driven literary publishing. A mere glance at the Council of Literary Magazines’ on-line directory (http://www.clmp.org/directory/) will reveal over a hundred exclusively literary publishers. Often non-profit, generally run by devoted volunteer staff, sometimes producing but one title a year, these publishers have made literature their only business — and their titles have won National Book Awards and Pulitzer Prizes as a result.”
PARTIES & EVENTS
Basic Civitas Books gave an “early celebration” of Black History Month at their offices on Park Avenue, on a frigid January 27th. Spotted in the crowd were authors Henry Louis Gates Jr., Michael Eric Dyson, and Martha Southgate, as well as literary agents Manie Baron, Malaika Adero, and Marie Brown, and Patrik Henry Bass of Essence (and a Running Press author), Henry Finder of the New Yorker, and Max Rodriguez, editor of QBR: The Black Book Review.
• Atlas Books, James Atlas’s reinvented Lipper Books line, now ensconced at HarperCollins, and funded by Roger Altman and other investors, chose The Lotos Club to celebrate its launch on January 30th.
MAZEL TOV
McGraw-Hill’s Chitra Bopardikar and HarperCollins’ Josh Marwell are delighted to announce the early arrival of Tobias Julian Marwell on January 27th.
