PEOPLE ROUNDUP
Madeline McIntosh has returned to Random House in the newly created position of President, Sales, Operations, and Digital. Her direct reports include Andrew Weber, SVP, Ops & Technology; Jaci Updike, SVP, Director, Random House Adult Sales; Joan DeMayo, SVP, Director, Children’s Sales and Director, Special Markets Sales; and Bonnie Ammer, EVP, International Sales. In addition to her U.S. responsibilities, McIntosh joins the Random House International Executive Board.
Elisabeth Dyssegaard has left HarperCollins, where she oversaw Smithsonian Books, to become Editor-in-Chief at Hyperion, following Will Balliett’s move to Thames & Hudson.
Neal Goff will be leaving his position as President of the Weekly Reader Publishing Group/Readers Digest as of the end of January 2010. He may be reached at nealgoff [at] gmail.com.
Former William Morrow Publisher Lisa Gallagher has moved to Sanford J. Greenburger. Her new e-mail address is lgallagher [at] sjga.com.
Bloomberg LP announced that it is closing Bloomberg Press, and will try to place the Press’s eight staffers elsewhere in the company.
Jim Benjamin, who was VP Finance & Operations at Sterling, has left the company and may be reached at jabenjamin [at] verizon.net. Laura Swerdloff has joined as an editor. She was previously an associate editor at Broadway.
Former SparkNotes Publisher Dan Weiss has joined Macmillan as Publisher-at-Large for St. Martin’s, reporting to paperback publisher Matthew Shear. Weiss will develop and acquire both fiction and nonfiction properties targeted at “twenty-somethings, Gen Yers, and older young adult readers,” for St. Martin’s as well as other Macmillan imprints.
Dystel & Goderich Literary Management is opening an office in LA, to be run by Michael Bourret, who has been at DGLM for 10 years. He will continue to grow his own list of author clients while also “aggressively pursuing new film and TV opportunities for the agency.”
Don Fehr, who left Kaplan, where he was Editorial Director, as Kaplan reduces its trade presence in order to focus on “core business and audiences,” may be reached at dfehr2 [at] verizon.net.
NAL/Penguin has named Danielle Perez Executive Editor, effective January 4. Perez was Senior Editor at Bantam.
Angela James has been named Executive Editor at Harlequin’s Carina Press. She was Editorial Director at Quartet Press.
Josh Getzler is moving to Russell & Volkening as an agent. He has been at Writers House for the past three years (prior to which he was COO of the Staten Island Yankees). He anticipates building his list of literary and commercial fiction, with a particular bias toward suspense and crime novels.
PJ Mark is moving to Janklow & Nesbit as an agent. He was agent and international rights director at McCormick & Williams. Mark will be replaced by Susan Hobson, who was Co-Director of Foreign Rights at Inkwell Management.
Macmillan Audio has hired Robert Allen as Editorial Director. Most recently he was a co-founder of Brands-to-Books (with Kathleen Spinelli, now at Walter Foster), after serving as Publisher of Random House Audio.
Borders Group has appointed Bill Dandy SVP, Marketing. Art Keeney, who has served in that post since June, will transition to the position of SVP, Store Operations. Larry Norton will move from his current role as SVP, Merchandising and Distribution, to the position of SVP, Merchandising for Adult Trade and Children’s Books. Norton joined the company in August.
In children’s books: Thomas P. Burke has joined Scholastic as SVP, E-Commerce, reporting to EVP and President of Scholastic Book Clubs and E-Commerce Judy Newman. Burke has been at BN.com for the past five years, overseeing merchandising, online marketing, customer experience, design and editorial content. Meanwhile, Rachel Bader has left Scholastic Media, where she was Director of Licensing and Consumer Promotion, to become Licensing Director, Packaged Goods and Promotions, at Chorion. She reports to Robert Traub, SVP Licensing for The Americas at Chorion.
Christine Duplessis has joined Penguin Children’s as Associate Director of Paperback, Series and Mass Merchandise Marketing. She was Marketing Manager at Atria and Washington Square Press. . . . Harper Children’s Executive Editor Susan Rich has joined Little, Brown Children’s in the new position of Editor-at-Large, where she will edit a new series from Lemony Snicket (a.k.a Daniel Handler) and other titles. . . . Daniel Nayeri is joining Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children’s Clarion imprint as Editor. He has worked as a children’s librarian, a literary agent, and an in-house and freelance editor, and is the co-author of the YA novel Another Faust.
Michele Wetherbee is returning to HarperOne as Creative Director. She has held art/creative director positions at Harcourt, O’Reilly Media, and the University of California at Berkeley.
David Leach has been named Director of Book Sales at Greenleaf Book Group. He had been National Key Account Manager, Special Sales, at Thomas Nelson.
PROMOTIONS AND INTERNAL CHANGES
Jane von Mehren announced that Random House Trade Paperbacks’ Kerri Buckley has been promoted to editor. She joined the company in 2004. Caitlin Alexander is being promoted to Senior Editor and will acquire fiction and nonfiction in hardcover and trade paperback.
Kathy Schneider announced that Angie Lee has been promoted to VP of Marketing at Harper. Lee joined the company in 2005 as a Senior Marketing Director in the Collins division. Prior to joining HC, Lee was a Marketing Director at Teach for America and also held positions at News America Marketing, a promotional agency under the News Corp umbrella. . . . Peter London has been promoted to Director of Permissions, effective immediately.
At St. Martin’s, Alyse Diamond has been promoted to editor, continuing to report to Kathy Huck. She has been at SMP since 2005, focusing on nonfiction (though she also acquired a middle-grade fiction series.)
At Blake Friedmann in the UK, Oliver Munson has been promoted to full-time agent.
Shelf Awareness reports that Tyson Cornell’s job as Director of Marketing and Publicity at LA’s Book Soup has been eliminated. He may be reached at tyson.cornell [at] gmail.com. Vroman’s is in the process of buying Book Soup, whose founder and owner, Glenn Goldman, died early this year.
UPCOMING EVENTS
The Mark Logic Digital Publishing Summit will take place on December 10 at the Plaza Hotel in New York. Columnist and ex-Publisher of the Wall Street Journal Gordon Crovitz, Outsell’s David Worlock, and Shannon Holman of McGraw Hill Higher Education will speak at the free, day-long seminar.
BAM’s Eat, Drink & Be Literary brings major contemporary authors to Brooklyn’s BAMcafé for dinners, readings, and engaging discussions. Evenings begin at 6:30pm with a buffet and wine, accompanied by live music. Following dinner, authors read from and are interviewed about their work, take questions from the audience, and sign books. Speakers this season are Wallace Shawn (January 7, 2010), E. L. Doctorow (January 21), Lynn Nottage (February 11), Sam Lipsyte (March 11), Colm Tóibín (April 8), Joshua Ferris (April 22), Jayne Anne Phillips (May 6), and Sam Shepard (June 3).
On February 1, the New York Center for Independent Publishing (NYCIP) will present “The Next Chapter in Publishing,” an intensive one-day conference designed to meet the needs of independent publishers and writers by exploring the changing technologies of the publishing industry. Speakers include Jeff Rivera of GalleyCat, Chris Kenneally of the Copyright Clearance Center, and Mark Coker of Smashwords.
