PEOPLE Heads rolling in and rolling out: Marco Ausenda, who comes from Touring Club Italia, will replace Antonio Polito as the head of Rizzoli US, reporting to Giulio Lattanzi. . . Jean-Marie Messier’s still running Vivendi, but of course major changes at Houghton Mifflin: Teri Kelly succeeds Wendy Strothman as SVP and head of trade…Continue Reading
PEOPLE Layoffs are the order of the day, though mergers, not the economy, seem to be the main reason. DK has laid off about 25 people, with more to come. Meanwhile, the move down to Hudson Street has been postponed, apparently as a cost-savings measure. No word yet on Phyllis Grann’s plans, though Random House…Continue Reading
Ashcan Memories Mauvignier Talks Trash in France, Celery Stalks Italy, and Holland Peeps at Lost Souls The dustbin has popped open in France this month and rendered up Laurent Mauvignier’s elegiac second novel, Learning to Finish, which details the plight of a trash collector who announces he is leaving his wife — only to maim…Continue Reading
PEOPLE There’s much happening at 375 Hudson Street: Danny Gurr has resigned as CEO of DK’s US operations, as a result of the following organizational changes effective immediately: The US editorial department will report primarily to DK UK Publisher Christopher Davis. Sales and Marketing will report through Dick Heffernan, President, Director of Sales, Adult Hardcover…Continue Reading
PEOPLE Gene Brissie, previously Editor in Chief at Prentice Hall Trade Publishing, has left to become a partner with Bert Holtje in the James Peter Associates Literary Agency. . . . Some changes in the S&S group: BJ Gabriel has been named VP National Accounts, with responsibility for sales of all S&S products, including adult…Continue Reading
PEOPLE A relatively quiet month, personnel-wise: Peter Bernstein has taken a new position as Editor-in-Chief of the University Alliance for Life-Long Learning, an online venture of Oxford, Stanford, Princeton, and Yale Universities to develop distance learning courses. He had been working on an author website, AuthorByAuthor. . . . VP and Managing Director Scott Lubeck…Continue Reading
PEOPLE Much news in the beginning of this year: Long anticipated, and widely reported (in some places, more than once), Sarah Crichton is out and Michael Pietsch is in at Little, Brown. In other TWP news, Time Life Books is closing and Neil Levin is heading the new group (down to a dozen or so…Continue Reading
Book Packagers Make the Best of a Worst-Case Scenario “The advantage of working with packagers,” says Mark Magowan, associate publisher at Abrams, “is that when the math of a series goes down, you don’t have to fire your own staff.” Though Magowan may be grinning as he says it, it’s no joke that book packagers…Continue Reading
When Bobby Flay went down in flames on the Food Network’s Iron Chef program last Sunday, having been crushed by opponent Masaharu Morimoto in the gladiatorial cook-off, you might have thought the Mesa Grill honcho’s defeat would darken one of the culinary universe’s brightest stars. Not likely. What with Nina and Tim Zagat among the…Continue Reading
PEOPLE This month, the announcement of the millennium comes from Penguin Putnam, which has hired retired Commanding General Gilbert S. Harper of the US Army as VP for warehousing and fulfillment. Responsibilities in his previous life included “designing the Army’s next generation distribution architecture.” Industry watchers like the image of the soldier reporting to our…Continue Reading
