PEOPLE
November brought some big moves in the industry, with Bill Barry going to DK as President, after a hiatus of two years (he had been at Hungry Minds when it was sold to Wiley) and Jim Jordan, Director of the Johns Hopkins University Press moving to Columbia University Press as President and Director (as of January, 2004). There were some departures, too: Shelley Pierce left Children’s Book-of-the-Month Club where she has been Editor-in-Chief for the past year. And Jeanine Laddomada, Editor of the Venus Book Club, as well as DBC, has also left for B&N.
Other news of the month: Leigh Haber, who was most recently Executive Editor at Hyperion, is going to Rodale as Editor-at-Large, acquiring and editing “ten or so” nonfiction titles per year. In addition to her work at Rodale, she will continue representing and editing projects on an independent basis. She and Heather Jackson, who joined Rodale as Executive Editor in Women’s Health Books, will report to Tami Booth, VP, Editor-in-Chief of Women’s Health Books. And Pete Fornatale is working on a freelance basis in acquisitions and editing, for the Men’s Health and Sports areas, reporting to Jeremy Katz. Miriam Backes has joined Rodale as Senior Editor, Cookbooks, working primarily on the direct mail side. She and Jackson report to Margot Schupf, Executive Editor, Lifestyle Books.
Olga Vezeris has become Executive Editor, HarperAudio. She was previously at Time Warner Publishing . . . Leah Nathan Spero has gone to HarperBusiness as Senior Editor. She was a journalist at BusinessWeek covering Wall Street and a writer for Talk Magazine. Pamela Spengler-Jaffee has joined Morrow Avon as Assistant Director of Publicity, reporting to Debbie Stier. She was previously at the PR firm of Trahan, Burden & Charles, Inc. where she worked on the introduction of Red Dress Ink for Harlequin Enterprises.
Lisa Considine has gone to Holt as Senior Editor, reporting to Jennifer Barth. She was most recently at Wiley and before that, at S&S. . . Ann Forstenzer has gone to Learning Resources, an educational toy/game manufacturer and publisher of teacher-related materials located in Vernon Hills, IL. She is VP, Special Markets, working from home. She was most recently at Millbrook.
Wendy Nicholson, VP, Executive Director of Public Relations for S&S Adult Trade, announced her retirement after 30 years. As of January she may be reached at nicholsonw@nyc.rr.com.
And Simon Tasker is leaving Scholastic trade to go to S&S, reporting to B.J. Gabriel in Sales, taking Mara Anastas’ place as National Accounts Director, Children’s. . . John Ziccardi has been named President of Sales for Kidsbooks, a promotional children’s book publisher. He spent most of his career at Bantam.
Peterson’s, the test-prep and reference publishing division of Thomson, has hired Del Franz as Editor-in-Chief. Franz previously served as Executive Editor at Kaplan. He replaces Laurie Barnett, SparkNotes’ Editorial Director. . . Karen Holt, most recently at Publishers Weekly’s PW Newsline, and previously Editor of Book Publishing Report, has joined the editorial staff at ForeWord as ForeSight Features Editor
. . . Martha Reddington, former Director of Special Sales at HarperCollins and S&S, announces the formation of Reddington Resources, where she will be a certified consultant for ACT!™, the world’s number one contact database management program. The Penguin Publishing Group is her first confirmed client. Go to www.reddingtonresources.com.
Rebecca Strong has formed the Rebecca Strong International Literary Agency. She was most recently at Crown, in subrights and editorial. She may be reached via email at rstrongtho@aol.com or (718) 499-6697.
More restructuring at Fodor’s, with President and Publisher Alison Gross and Associate Publisher Ensley Eikenburg being the first casualties. David Naggar, the Random Information Group President, will name a new team shortly.
Where are they now? Thomas Middelhoff, now a Managing Director at Investcorp, and who was elected to the NYT Board of Directors in September, attended his first meeting in New York in November. And Dick Snyder, most recently head of the ill-fated Golden (the assets of which were sold 2 ½ years ago) turned up on the front page of the NYT recently in an article about Edgar Bronfman, whom Snyder is advising on his purchase of Warner Music.
DULY NOTED
On the 20th anniversary of The Thurber House, and after a three-year hiatus, the Thurber Prize will be given to the author and publisher of the outstanding book of humor writing published in the United States in the last year. Go to www.thurberhouse.org for submission guidelines. (Thurber House is now run by NY publishing veteran Susanne Jaffe.)
• The BBC reports that the British Library has reached an agreement with Amazon.co.uk by which the BL’s catalogue, which has records of approximately 2.5m books, has been integrated on the Amazon website. The service is geared towards people in the antiquarian and second-hand book trade to assist those customers who have requests for older book titles.
• This week Bookreporter.com launched FaithfulReader.com, “the 7th website in The Book Report Network.” The website is edited for Christian readers, and offers reviews, author interviews, a monthly poll, question and even Word of Mouth. The Book Report Network claims “more than 515,000 unique visitors” read the websites in the Network during 1,218,246 visitor sessions each month.
• Tina Jordan, Special Events & Public Relations Director for BookExpo America, has invited anyone interested in submitting conference or author panel suggestions for the BEA Latin American and Latino Author Forum, as well as the Latin American & Latino Buzz Workshop featuring editors from US and Latin American based publishing houses, to contact her by Dec. 19. She may be reached at tjordan@reedexpo.com.
• And speaking of things multicultural, Adweek is offering a Multicultural Marketing in America directory, claiming it’s the first directory to cover advertising, media, and marketing. It lists US multicultural agencies, PR firms, brand marketers, and the media (radio, TV, cable, magazines and newspapers) targeting Hispanic/Latino, African-American, and Asian-American consumers. The directory will detail “over 2,200 companies and more than 13,000 key personnel leading the drive to reach these expanding markets and provide trends, analysis and projections.”
DECEMBER EVENTS
City Lights celebrates its 50th anniversary on December 3 at 8 pm at the NYC Poetry Project at 131 East 10th Street. General Admission is $8 and CL’s Elaine Katzenburger and Ira Silverberg are hosts. Contact stacy@citylights.com for more details.
• Oscar Dystel, the former President and CEO of Bantam Books (and whose employees now run many of the publishers in New York), will be interviewed by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt on December 9, 6-7:30 pm, at the Small Press Center, 20 W. 44th St., New York City. Tickets are $10 for non-members; $5 for members. For more info go to smallpress.org or call (212) 764-7021.
PARTIES
Beacon Press celebrated its 150th anniversary on November 13 (though the actual anniversary is in early 2004). It claims to be the country’s oldest nonprofit press, with a list of authors that includes Pablo Neruda, James Baldwin, and Edwidge Dandicat. Authors, staff members, and friends of the press attended a party in Boston to commemorate the independent press’ sesquicentennial.
MAZEL TOV
Congratulations to HarperCollins/ ReganBooks’ Carie Freimuth and Perseus’s John Hughes on their forthcoming marriage.
People
November brought some big moves in the industry, with Bill Barry going to DK as President, after a hiatus of two years (he had been at Hungry Minds when it was sold to Wiley) and Jim Jordan, Director of the Johns Hopkins University Press moving to Columbia University Press as President and Director (as of January, 2004). There were some departures, too: Shelley Pierce left Children’s Book-of-the-Month Club where she has been Editor-in-Chief for the past year. And Jeanine Laddomada, Editor of the Venus Book Club, as well as DBC, has also left for B&N.
Other news of the month: Leigh Haber, who was most recently Executive Editor at Hyperion, is going to Rodale as Editor-at-Large, acquiring and editing “ten or so” nonfiction titles per year. In addition to her work at Rodale, she will continue representing and editing projects on an independent basis. She and Heather Jackson, who joined Rodale as Executive Editor in Women’s Health Books, will report to Tami Booth, VP, Editor-in-Chief of Women’s Health Books. And Pete Fornatale is working on a freelance basis in acquisitions and editing, for the Men’s Health and Sports areas, reporting to Jeremy Katz. Miriam Backes has joined Rodale as Senior Editor, Cookbooks, working primarily on the direct mail side. She and Jackson report to Margot Schupf, Executive Editor, Lifestyle Books.
Olga Vezeris has become Executive Editor, HarperAudio. She was previously at Time Warner Publishing. . . Leah Nathan Spero has gone to HarperBusiness as Senior Editor. She was a journalist at Business Week covering Wall Street and a writer for Talk Magazine. Pamela Spengler-Jaffee has joined Morrow Avon as Assistant Director of Publicity, reporting to Debbie Stier. She was previously at the PR firm of Trahan, Burden & Charles, Inc. where she worked on the introduction of Red Dress Ink for Harlequin Enterprises.
Lisa Considine has gone to Holt as Senior Editor, reporting to Jennifer Barth. She was most recently at Wiley and before that, at S&S. . . Ann Forstenzer has gone to Learning Resources, an educational toy/game manufacturer and publisher of teacher-related materials located in Vernon Hills, IL. She is VP, Special Markets, working from home. She was most recently at Millbrook.
Wendy Nicholson, VP, Executive Director of Public Relations for S&S Adult Trade, announced her retirement after 30 years. As of January she may be reached at nicholsonw@nyc.rr.com.
And Simon Tasker is leaving Scholastic trade to go to S&S, reporting to B.J. Gabriel in Sales, taking Mara Anastas’ place as National Accounts Director, Children’s. . . John Ziccardi has been named President of Sales for Kidsbooks, a promotional children’s book publisher. He spent most of his career at Bantam.
Peterson’s, the test-prep and reference publishing division of Thomson, has hired Del Franz as Editor-in-Chief. Franz previously served as Executive Editor at Kaplan. He replaces Laurie Barnett, SparkNotes’ Editorial Director. . . Karen Holt, most recently at Publishers Weekly’s PW Newsline, and previously Editor of Book Publishing Report, has joined the editorial staff at ForeWord as ForeSight Features Editor
. . . Martha Reddington, former Director of Special Sales at HarperCollins and S&S, announces the formation of Reddington Resources, where she will be a certified consultant for ACT!™, the world’s number one contact database management program. The Penguin Publishing Group is her first confirmed client. Go to www.reddingtonresources.com.
Rebecca Strong has formed the Rebecca Strong International Literary Agency. She was most recently at Crown, in subrights and editorial. She may be reached via email at rstrongtho@aol.com or (718) 499-6697.
More restructuring at Fodor’s, with President and Publisher Alison Gross and Associate Publisher Ensley Eikenburg being the first casualties. David Naggar, the Random Information Group President, will name a new team shortly.
Where are they now? Thomas Middelhoff, now a Managing Director at Investcorp, and who was elected to the NYT Board of Directors in September, attended his first meeting in New York in November. And Dick Snyder, most recently head of the ill-fated Golden (the assets of which were sold 2 ½ years ago) turned up on the front page of the NYT recently in an article about Edgar Bronfman, whom Snyder is advising on his purchase of Warner Music.
Duly Noted
On the 20th anniversary of The Thurber House, and after a three-year hiatus, the Thurber Prize will be given to the author and publisher of the outstanding book of humor writing published in the United States in the last year. Go to www.thurberhouse.org for submission guidelines. (Thurber House is now run by NY publishing veteran Susanne Jaffe.)
• The BBC reports that the British Library has reached an agreement with Amazon.co.uk by which the BL’s catalogue, which has records of approximately 2.5m books, has been integrated on the Amazon website. The service is geared towards people in the antiquarian and second-hand book trade to assist those customers who have requests for older book titles.
• This week Bookreporter.com launched FaithfulReader.com, “the 7th website in The Book Report Network.” The website is edited for Christian readers, and offers reviews, author interviews, a monthly poll, question and even Word of Mouth. The Book Report Network claims “more than 515,000 unique visitors” read the websites in the Network during 1,218,246 visitor sessions each month.
• Tina Jordan, Special Events & Public Relations Director for BookExpo America, has invited anyone interested in submitting conference or author panel suggestions for the BEA Latin American and Latino Author Forum, as well as the Latin American & Latino Buzz Workshop featuring editors from US and Latin American based publishing houses, to contact her by Dec. 19. She may be reached at tjordan@reedexpo.com.
• And speaking of things multicultural, Adweek is offering a Multicultural Marketing in America directory, claiming it’s the first directory to cover advertising, media, and marketing. It lists US multicultural agencies, PR firms, brand marketers, and the media (radio, TV, cable, magazines and newspapers) targeting Hispanic/Latino, African-American, and Asian-American consumers. The directory will detail “over 2,200 companies and more than 13,000 key personnel leading the drive to reach these expanding markets and provide trends, analysis and projections.”
December Events
City Lights celebrates its 50th anniversary on December 3 at 8 pm at the NYC Poetry Project at 131 East 10th Street. General Admission is $8 and CL’s Elaine Katzenburger and Ira Silverberg are hosts. Contact stacy@citylights.com for more details.
• Oscar Dystel, the former President and CEO of Bantam Books (and whose employees now run many of the publishers in New York), will be interviewed by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt on December 9, 6-7:30 pm, at the Small Press Center, 20 W. 44th St., New York City. Tickets are $10 for non-members; $5 for members. For more info go to smallpress.org or call (212) 764-7021.
Parties
Beacon Press celebrated its 150th anniversary on November 13 (though the actual anniversary is in early 2004). It claims to be the country’s oldest nonprofit press, with a list of authors that includes Pablo Neruda, James Baldwin, and Edwidge Dandicat. Authors, staff members, and friends of the press attended a party in Boston to commemorate the independent press’ sesquicentennial.
Mazel Tov
Congratulations to HarperCollins/ ReganBooks’ Carie Freimuth and Perseus’s John Hughes on their forthcoming marriage
People
November brought some big moves in the industry, with Bill Barry going to DK as President, after a hiatus of two years (he had been at Hungry Minds when it was sold to Wiley) and Jim Jordan, Director of the Johns Hopkins University Press moving to Columbia University Press as President and Director (as of January, 2004). There were some departures, too: Shelley Pierce left Children’s Book-of-the-Month Club where she has been Editor-in-Chief for the past year. And Jeanine Laddomada, Editor of the Venus Book Club, as well as DBC, has also left for B&N.
Other news of the month: Leigh Haber, who was most recently Executive Editor at Hyperion, is going to Rodale as Editor-at-Large, acquiring and editing “ten or so” nonfiction titles per year. In addition to her work at Rodale, she will continue representing and editing projects on an independent basis. She and Heather Jackson, who joined Rodale as Executive Editor in Women’s Health Books, will report to Tami Booth, VP, Editor-in-Chief of Women’s Health Books. And Pete Fornatale is working on a freelance basis in acquisitions and editing, for the Men’s Health and Sports areas, reporting to Jeremy Katz. Miriam Backes has joined Rodale as Senior Editor, Cookbooks, working primarily on the direct mail side. She and Jackson report to Margot Schupf, Executive Editor, Lifestyle Books.
Olga Vezeris has become Executive Editor, HarperAudio. She was previously at Time Warner Publishing. . . Leah Nathan Spero has gone to HarperBusiness as Senior Editor. She was a journalist at Business Week covering Wall Street and a writer for Talk Magazine. Pamela Spengler-Jaffee has joined Morrow Avon as Assistant Director of Publicity, reporting to Debbie Stier. She was previously at the PR firm of Trahan, Burden & Charles, Inc. where she worked on the introduction of Red Dress Ink for Harlequin Enterprises.
Lisa Considine has gone to Holt as Senior Editor, reporting to Jennifer Barth. She was most recently at Wiley and before that, at S&S. . . Ann Forstenzer has gone to Learning Resources, an educational toy/game manufacturer and publisher of teacher-related materials located in Vernon Hills, IL. She is VP, Special Markets, working from home. She was most recently at Millbrook.
Wendy Nicholson, VP, Executive Director of Public Relations for S&S Adult Trade, announced her retirement after 30 years. As of January she may be reached at nicholsonw@nyc.rr.com.
And Simon Tasker is leaving Scholastic trade to go to S&S, reporting to B.J. Gabriel in Sales, taking Mara Anastas’ place as National Accounts Director, Children’s. . . John Ziccardi has been named President of Sales for Kidsbooks, a promotional children’s book publisher. He spent most of his career at Bantam.
Peterson’s, the test-prep and reference publishing division of Thomson, has hired Del Franz as Editor-in-Chief. Franz previously served as Executive Editor at Kaplan. He replaces Laurie Barnett, SparkNotes’ Editorial Director. . . Karen Holt, most recently at Publishers Weekly’s PW Newsline, and previously Editor of Book Publishing Report, has joined the editorial staff at ForeWord as ForeSight Features Editor
. . . Martha Reddington, former Director of Special Sales at HarperCollins and S&S, announces the formation of Reddington Resources, where she will be a certified consultant for ACT!™, the world’s number one contact database management program. The Penguin Publishing Group is her first confirmed client. Go to www.reddingtonresources.com.
Rebecca Strong has formed the Rebecca Strong International Literary Agency. She was most recently at Crown, in subrights and editorial. She may be reached via email at rstrongtho@aol.com or (718) 499-6697.
More restructuring at Fodor’s, with President and Publisher Alison Gross and Associate Publisher Ensley Eikenburg being the first casualties. David Naggar, the Random Information Group President, will name a new team shortly.
Where are they now? Thomas Middelhoff, now a Managing Director at Investcorp, and who was elected to the NYT Board of Directors in September, attended his first meeting in New York in November. And Dick Snyder, most recently head of the ill-fated Golden (the assets of which were sold 2 ½ years ago) turned up on the front page of the NYT recently in an article about Edgar Bronfman, whom Snyder is advising on his purchase of Warner Music.
Duly Noted
On the 20th anniversary of The Thurber House, and after a three-year hiatus, the Thurber Prize will be given to the author and publisher of the outstanding book of humor writing published in the United States in the last year. Go to www.thurberhouse.org for submission guidelines. (Thurber House is now run by NY publishing veteran Susanne Jaffe.)
• The BBC reports that the British Library has reached an agreement with Amazon.co.uk by which the BL’s catalogue, which has records of approximately 2.5m books, has been integrated on the Amazon website. The service is geared towards people in the antiquarian and second-hand book trade to assist those customers who have requests for older book titles.
• This week Bookreporter.com launched FaithfulReader.com, “the 7th website in The Book Report Network.” The website is edited for Christian readers, and offers reviews, author interviews, a monthly poll, question and even Word of Mouth. The Book Report Network claims “more than 515,000 unique visitors” read the websites in the Network during 1,218,246 visitor sessions each month.
• Tina Jordan, Special Events & Public Relations Director for BookExpo America, has invited anyone interested in submitting conference or author panel suggestions for the BEA Latin American and Latino Author Forum, as well as the Latin American & Latino Buzz Workshop featuring editors from US and Latin American based publishing houses, to contact her by Dec. 19. She may be reached at tjordan@reedexpo.com.
• And speaking of things multicultural, Adweek is offering a Multicultural Marketing in America directory, claiming it’s the first directory to cover advertising, media, and marketing. It lists US multicultural agencies, PR firms, brand marketers, and the media (radio, TV, cable, magazines and newspapers) targeting Hispanic/Latino, African-American, and Asian-American consumers. The directory will detail “over 2,200 companies and more than 13,000 key personnel leading the drive to reach these expanding markets and provide trends, analysis and projections.”
December Events
City Lights celebrates its 50th anniversary on December 3 at 8 pm at the NYC Poetry Project at 131 East 10th Street. General Admission is $8 and CL’s Elaine Katzenburger and Ira Silverberg are hosts. Contact stacy@citylights.com for more details.
• Oscar Dystel, the former President and CEO of Bantam Books (and whose employees now run many of the publishers in New York), will be interviewed by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt on December 9, 6-7:30 pm, at the Small Press Center, 20 W. 44th St., New York City. Tickets are $10 for non-members; $5 for members. For more info go to smallpress.org or call (212) 764-7021.
Parties
Beacon Press celebrated its 150th anniversary on November 13 (though the actual anniversary is in early 2004). It claims to be the country’s oldest nonprofit press, with a list of authors that includes Pablo Neruda, James Baldwin, and Edwidge Dandicat. Authors, staff members, and friends of the press attended a party in Boston to commemorate the independent press’ sesquicentennial.
Mazel Tov
Congratulations to HarperCollins/ ReganBooks’ Carie Freimuth and Perseus’s John Hughes on their forthcoming marriage.
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