PEOPLE As widely reported over the last month, while BN.com staffs up, layoffs continue at both Barnes & Noble and Borders. About 40 people were let go from Barnes & Noble recently, including Bob Wietrak, Lee Stern, Marcella Smith, Mo Stewart, and buyers Dan Mayer, Dave Hathaway, and Kim Corradini. At Borders, just after New…Continue Reading
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…Continue Reading
PEOPLE Jonathan Karp is now settled in as EVP and Publisher of the Simon & Schuster trade imprint. Karp, who succeeds David Rosenthal, came from Twelve, an imprint of the Hachette Book Group that he founded in 2005. A new Publisher for Twelve is actively being recruited. Isabel Swift, who was Editor Emeritus at Harlequin,…Continue Reading
PEOPLE Doubleday has eliminated 16 positions across all of the group’s imprints, in the editorial, marketing, publicity, art, and ad promo departments. Those leaving include editor Jennifer Josephy; Janet Silver, Nan Talese, Editor at Large; and from Spiegel & Grau, senior editor Tina Pohlman, Director of Publicity Gretchen Koss, Director of Marketing Megan Walker, and…Continue Reading
PEOPLE Little, Brown editor Reagan Arthur has received her own imprint, Reagan Arthur Books. Arthur’s title will be VP, Editorial Director, and she will continue to report to Geoff Shandler. The imprint’s first books will be published in Fall 2009. Nancy Hancock has joined HarperOne as Executive Editor, reporting directly to Mickey Maudlin. Hancock was…Continue Reading
You could call them secret shoppers. Like the plainclothes informants who check out department stores for a lapse in customer service, publishers who slip on authors’ shoes return from their writing experience armed with anecdotes and tips that market research can’t devine. What many intelligencers see shocks them. Even thirty-year publishing veterans see their industry…Continue Reading
PEOPLE Will Kiester is returning to the US after 18-months in Australia at Murdoch Books, to become Publisher of Fairwinds Press, an imprint of Rockport Publications. Previously, He had been at Quarto. Kaylee Davis’ position at Bookspan’s Children’s BOMC/KBP was eliminated in a reorganization. The company has decided to focus the club in a more…Continue Reading
PEOPLE It seems as though anyone who wasn’t on vacation or sabbatical this month was busy changing jobs: Liz Perl has been named VP Publisher of Rodale, reporting to Tami Booth Corwin. She was previously Associate Publisher of Penguin‘s Riverhead, Perigee, HP, Portfolio and Sentinel lines and Director of Marketing and Executive Director of Publicity…Continue Reading
Amid Booming Book Biz Coverage, Critics See ‘Gaping’ News Holes First there was Keith Kelly at the New York Post. Then there were the hot-shots at Inside.com, and thus dawned a new era of frenzied jockeying among daily media scribes to fling arrows into the side of the homely book publishing business. While stalwarts such…Continue Reading
Your Guide to Cost-Cutting Without Lopping Off Heads Now that synergy’s been debunked, and good old Thomas Middelhoff has been spun off, the publishing world has settled down to the rather more prosaic task of whittling away at its already bare-bones cost structure. “It’s clear there is retrenchment,” as one public relations executive says, but…Continue Reading
