Jon Yaged has been named President of Macmillan Children’s. He had been COO at HouseParty.com since March 2010 and was previously VP and Publisher for Disney Book Group.
Nina Hoffman, President of National Geographic Books, will leave at the end of the year. Editor-in-Chief and Books COO Hector Sierra will report to Declan Moore, who was recently promoted to Publishing President, for the interim. Children’s book publishing will continue to report to EVP of Children’s Publishing Melina Bellows.
Steve Black has been named VP, Client Services at Simon & Schuster Distribution. He was co-founder and COO of CDS (later bought by Perseus), and was most recently Sales Manager for Book Sales and Director of Sales at Southern Progress. He will have responsibility for distribution client relationships and new business development, reporting to Dennis Eulau. SVP Supply Chain Operations Joe D’Onofrio, who joined Simon & Schuster in 1986, has left. As a result of the reorganization, VP Director of Finance Karen Fetty will also be leaving.
In an unrelated development, S&S Associate Publisher Aileen Boyle is leaving the company.
Oxford University Press announced that after an “extensive search,” Niko Pfund, Publisher of OUP’s Academic division, has agreed to assume the position of Interim President, OUP USA, but will also continue in his current role.
Effective January 10, 2011, David Rosenthal is joining Penguin as President and Publisher of a new, still unnamed imprint. Rosenthal was most recently Publisher and EVP of Simon & Schuster and earlier was Publisher of Villard Books, Executive Editor of Random House, Managing Editor of Rolling Stone, and Executive Editor of New York Magazine.
Scholastic announced that Lori Benton has been named VP, Publisher for its Trade Publishing division, starting January 3, 2011, and reporting to President of Scholastic Trade Ellie Berger. Benton was most recently the General Manager and Publisher of Capstone’s fiction division, and is currently Chairman of the Board of Directors for Every Child a Reader, the nonprofit foundation of the Children’s Book Council. She previously held positions in children’s books at Harcourt, Henry Holt, and William Morrow.
Patricia Eisemann will be joining Henry Holt on January 4 as Director of Publicity, VP Sales and Marketing Maggie Richards announced. A 20-year veteran of the book business, Eisemann was most recently at the New York Times as Assistant Director, Media Relations and Community Affairs/Corporate Communications.
Debbie Stier has left HarperCollins, where she was Director of Digital Marketing.
Dorchester CEO John Prebich has left the struggling publisher, and a new CEO, Bob Anthony, has been named. Anthony, who was most recently CFO and CEO at Backe Marketing, plans to “revitalize” Dorchester,” said a statement from the house.
Brenda Copeland has joined St. Martin’s as an Executive Editor. For the past five years, she has been Executive Editor at Hyperion, and prior to that she worked at Pocket Books and Atria.
Amber Qureshi is leaving Free Press, where she was a Senior Editor, to become Executive Editor of Viking, starting in January. Senior Editor Wylie O’Sullivan is also leaving Free Press, to spend more time with her family. Meanwhile, Alessandra Bastagli has joined Free Press as Senior Editor. Since 2005, she has been at Palgrave Macmillan, most recently as Executive Editor.
Trish Todd, VP and EIC, Touchstone, announced that Matthew Benjamin is joining as a Senior Editor on December 13. He was Senior Editor at Morrow.
Allison Lorentzen has been named Editor at Penguin Books. She was most recently an Associate Editor at HarperCollins and is also an editor of n+. In her new role, she will be working closely with Kathryn Court on Viking and Penguin acquisitions.
HarperCollins has hired Shane Norman as Director of Interactive Marketing, reporting to EVP, Chief Digital Officer Charlie Redmayne. He was Manager of Interactive Sales and Marketing at Fox Television.
Ruta Drummond, who was the children’s book buyer at Borders for over 25 years, has joined children’s book publisher tiger tales as Associate Publisher.
Emily Meehan has joined Disney/ Hyperion as Executive Editor. She has been Executive Editor at S&S Children’s for the past ten years.
Melville House has hired Charles Day as Director of Digital Marketing and Publicity. He had been General Manager of the Book Soup bookstore in Los Angeles.
Rob Crawford has joined Overlook Press as Editor. He was an Assistant Editor at HarperCollins.
HarperOne SVP, Associate Publisher Claudia Boutote announced some changes and additions to HarperOne’s publicity department: Darcy Cohan and Melinda Mullen have joined the company as Publicity Directors, reporting to Boutote. Cohan was most recently at PoliPoint Press and also ran her own PR firm, DLC Literary. Mullen began her career at HarperCollins and has held publicity positions at S&S, Putnam, and St. Martin’s; she also ran her own PR firm, MRM PR+Marketing. Julie Burton, Associate Director of Publicity, will also report to Boutote, and Suzanne Wickham, Senior Director of Publicity, will continue to report to her.
VP, Publisher Nicole Geiger and her four-person editorial group will leave Tricycle Press by January 31, when Random House Children’s Books is discontinuing the frontlist publishing program of the Berkeley-based publishing division of Ten Speed. Tricycle Marketing and Publicity Manager Laura Mancuso will stay on in the same capacity at Random House Children’s Books.
PROMOTIONS AND INTERNAL CHANGES
At HarperCollins, David Sweeney has been promoted to VP, Special Markets, responsible for Mail Order, Retail, Wholesale and Premium.
Amy Baker has been promoted to Senior Marketing Director of Harper Perennial.
Courtney Young has been promoted to Senior Editor for Penguin’s Portfolio, Sentinel, and Current imprints.
Counterpoint Managing Editor Laura Mazer will take on the additional role of Executive Editor for Soft Skull Press as well, managing acquisitions and operations.
DULY NOTED
Neal Goff, President, President-Elect of the Board of Directors at the Association of Educational Publishers, and president of Egremont Associates, has released a survey of e-book buying and reading habits. The study, conducted in August/ September, elicited responses from 1,300 teachers and librarians and revealed differences between the two groups. Some findings:
- Librarians who bought e-books for professional reasons in the past year report having bought an average of 844 of them, most from school library budgets.
- Over 92% of librarians say that at least some of their e-book purchases are funded by their school. Only 30% of teachers say the same thing.
- 46% of teachers reported never having either bought e-books or obtained them for free. Only 29% of librarians reported no e-book acquisitions at all.
- E-book-buying librarians have bought an average of 17.9 e-books for professional development purposes in the past year, compared to teachers’ average of 3.6 e-books purchased for the same reason.
- 75% of teachers and librarians who purchase e-books feel that they will have a positive impact on students’ reading comprehension. For more information, or to find out how to buy the report for $20 off the retail price, visit www.egremontassociates.com.
The Lambda Literary Awards will be the new home for the Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists’ Prize, with separate prizes for “one self-identified man and one self-identified woman,” to “recognize emergent LGBT authors who have written and published at least three novels or two novels and a substantial additional literary work such as poetry, short stories, essays.”
Bowker PubTrack and the AAP will cohost two educational events at the AAP’s New York office. Each will provide an overview of the use of consumer data by publishing, followed by a presentation on how editorial, sales, and marketing professionals can use consumer data to acquire, market, and sell their titles more effectively. The first event, New Ways for Editors & Marketers to Understand the Changing Book Consumer, will take place on Thursday, December 16 from 9:30 AM to 12:00 PM. The second event, New Ways for Marketing and Sales Professionals to Understand Shifting Book Sales Channels, will take place on Thursday, February 3, 2011 from 9:30 AM to 12:00 PM. For more information about these events, please contact Tina Jordan at tjordan [at] publishers.org.
German-based Langenscheidt Publishing Group is closing Langenscheidt Publishers Inc., its U.S. division. Langenscheidt has been struggling with declining sales in all areas for several years, and this past fall, it sold its maps and atlas group to Universal Map.
IN MEMORIAM
A “celebration of the life” of Ralph Vicinanza will take place on December 7 from 6–8 PM at the Bruno Walter Auditorium at Lincoln Center, NYPL for the Performing Arts, 111 Amsterdam Avenue (between 64th and 65th St.). A reception will follow.
