People
Publishers haven’t gotten the memo about summer doldrums, apparently, because this has been a record month for job changes:
Phaidon Press announced that Chris North has become MD, working out of its London headquarters. North was most recently at HarperCollins, first in New York and later in Toronto as COO of HarperCollins Canada.
Janet Harris has left Storey Books (part of Workman), where she was Publisher. She may be reached at janetharris2004@aol.com. . . . Michelle Lewy has been named Director of Client Services for Spier Inc. succeeding Michael Kazan, who went to Bennett Book Advertising earlier this year. She was mostly recently with Scholastic. . . . As noted elsewhere, Michele Martin has gone to Avalon as Publishing Director.
Diana Blough has left Random House Children’s, where she was Director of Marketing, for the same position at Bloomsbury. And Anne Merrow is leaving Broadway to go to Thomas Dunne Books as an editor.
Luke Dempsey has joined Crown working for Editor in Chief Kristin Kiser. He was most recently a Senior Editor at Atria Books. Last month Rick Horgan went from Warner to Crown as Executive Editor. Meanwhile, John Ahern has moved from Warner to McGraw-Hill, as Senior Editor reporting to Judith McCarthy. . . . STC has hired Debbie Yost as Senior Editor. She was most recently at Rodale and Prentice-Hall.
Wendy Broad Lazear has left the agency business and joined Houghton Mifflin as Executive Editor. Jennifer Haller has left HM for Harcourt, in the newly created position of VP of Sales, Children’s Books. She will begin there in September.
Cynthia Good, most recently President and Publisher of Penguin Canada, has been named Director of the Creative Publishing Program School for Creative and Performing Art at Humber College in Toronto.
Justin Schwartz has joined Wiley as Senior Editor. He just published his first book, Veg Out Vegetarian Guide to New York City (Gibbs-Smith) in June. Pamela Adler has left Wiley for Rodale, where she is an editor.
Publishers Group West announced that Kevin Votel, who was previously National Accounts Director for BGI, has been named VP Marketing. And Charles Roberts, who was let go from S&S after 40 years, the last 20 as VP Field Sales, will sell to accounts across the Southeast, Midwest and Southwest. Michelle Fischer has joined PGW as Mass Merchandise Sales Representative. Meanwhile Maureen Phelan, formerly Special Markets Manager, left PGW on July 9 to pursue other interests, and Peg O’ Donnell, PGW’s New England sales representative, is leaving to join NBN as a marketing manager in September. Chitra Bopardikar has been named VP International Sales — a new position —reporting to Rich Freese. She was with McGraw-Hill.
Susanna Phillips has joined Sesame Workshop as Director, International Publishing. Phillips’ focus will be on increasing the Workshop’s publishing activity outside of the U.S. Most recently, Phillips was Director, International and Domestic Special Sales at Reader’s Digest Children’s Books.
Following the closing of Thomson’s NY Business & Professional Publishing office, Myles Thompson, founder and publisher of Thomson-Texere, has left the company. He may be reached at (917) 969-2024, mylescthompson@yahoo.com. Lee Thompson will continue her consulting for Thomson and may be reached at liananthompson@yahoo.com, (212) 988-2580.
In Publicity: Everyone changed jobs this month. At Ballantine, Director of Publicity Kim Hovey was named to the new position of Director of Marketing. Sanyu Dillon joins the group Director of Marketing at Little Random. She was Assistant Director of Marketing at S&S. Both report to Associate Publisher Libby McGuire. Little Random Publicity Director Tom Perry is being promoted to Publicity Director for the entire RH Publishing Group, also reporting to McGuire. Sally Marvin has been promoted to Deputy Publicity Director for the Random imprint. Meanwhile, Seale Ballenger has left Atria and may be reached at shb6964@aol.com. Justin Loeber is Atria’s new Director of Publicity. Loeber has held the same title at the HarperCollins imprint. Jennifer Swihart has been promoted to Director of Publicity at HarperCollins.
Linda B. Keene will become EVP, Marketing at Scholastic, stepping down from the company’s board of directors in order to take the position. She succeeds Dick Spaulding, who remains as a consultant.
Bethany Patten has joined the Perseus Books Group as International Sales Manager. She was previously a manager of special markets at the Time Warner Book Group. Amie Munro joins the company in the “newly
defined position” of Domestic Rights Manager. She was most recently a Marketing Manager at Bulfinch. They report to Carolyn Savarese. . . .
John Loudon has resigned as executive editor at Harper SanFrancisco after 27 years at the company and will continue to work independently for the imprint as an Editor at Large, along with acquiring for other publishers and serving as a consultant.
Ron Davis has joined Sterling Publishing as VP, Special Sales. He was previously at S&S. Davis takes over from Martin Schamus, who has been named SVP, New Business Development. Chris Grimm has left S&S after four years, most recently as Director of Planning and Distribution in the Distributor Sales and Retail Marketing Division. Prior to moving to S&S, he spent 10 years in the BDD sales organization. He can be reached at Fchrisgrimm@aol.com and at (203) 829-2727.
Promotions
Roger Freet has been named a Senior Editor for Harper San Francisco. Kate Travers has been promoted to Editor of Harper Perennial.
At Simon & Schuster, Jen Bergstrom has been promoted to Publisher of the Simon Spotlight Entertainment and Simon Spotlight imprints, still reporting to Robin Corey for Spotlight and to Rick Richter for the entertainment line.
Duly Noted
Bowker-owned market research firm Simba held a webinar on July 15 to discuss its recent report on the book market, “Business of Consumer Book Publishing 2004” (available at www.simbanet.com). Among the trends discussed at the webinar were the increasing popularity of graphic novels. Included in this year’s report are four new categories: contemporary literary fiction; classic literary fiction; graphic novels; and politics/current events.
• PEN announces State of Emergency: Unconventional Readings, with Laurie Anderson, Paul Auster, Russell Banks, Michael Cunningham, Don DeLillo, Joan Didion, Ariel Dorfman, Jonathan Safran Foer, Barbara Goldsmith, A. M. Homes, A. E. Hotchner, Margo Jefferson, Edward P. Jones, Walter Dean Myers, Salman Rushdie, Monique Truong, Kurt Vonnegut, & Eve Ensler. It will be held Wednesday, Aug. 4, at 7 p.m., at The Great Hall at Cooper Union, 7 East 7th Street at Third Avenue. Admission is free. For more information, call (212) 334-1660 x107 or see www.pen.org.
• The Rona Jaffe Foundation will host its 10th Annual Writers’ Awards Sept. 30, at 6-8 p.m. at the Lotos Club.
Parties
The Overlook Press presented a Slide show and lecture at The Museum of Natural History to announce the publication of Christopher Ondaatje’s Hemingway in Africa: The Last Safari. It was followed on July 28 by a publication party hosted by Peter Mayer at his home. The guest list included Explorers Club members Jeff Stolzer and Nicci Young, HC’s Jane Friedman, Putnam’s Carole Baron, and super lawyer Martin Garbus.
Mazel Tov
Welcome to June Barrett Cook-Selman, the child that literary agent Ira Silverberg helped create, who was born on June 11, weighing in at 8 lbs. 5 ozs.
