PEOPLE Laurie Brown is leaving FSG, where she was SVP, Director Sales & Marketing. Her duties will be assumed by Jeff Seroy and Linda Rosenberg. . . Gary Gentel has been named VP Sales, Trade Division at Scholastic. He was most recently with Dorling Kindersley. . . John Schline has been made SVP, Corporate Director…Continue Reading
PEOPLE More Random House movement: Craig Virden, who has been President of RH Children’s and before that, BDD Books for Young Readers, is leaving. Crown’s Chip Gibson will take over, with Rich Romano as his EVP. Meanwhile Jenny Frost, now heading up Random Audio (which she will continue to run), will take over Crown Publishing…Continue Reading
Mike Shatzkin of the Idea Logical Company took a retro tack at the Seybold Seminars last month as he rolled out “a brand new opportunity to get more sales and lower the returns of physical books.” We offer a brief excerpt of his remarks. Here’s the fact most publishers and chain booksellers seem to ignore:…Continue Reading
PEOPLE Steve Parr has been named CEO of Abrams, following the departure of Mark Magowan and Alan Rutsky (along with two dozen others) at the end of the year. He was most recently with Emap. . . . After 14 years at Harcourt, Louise Pelan, VP and Publisher of Children’s Books, is taking early retirement…Continue Reading
BookExpo America Returns to Gotham, Pondering Its ‘Donut Problem’ You may as well cue up the ticker tape. Because when BookExpo America lands in New York this May after a decade-long hiatus, the annual book industry trade show “will be celebrating its return to the publishing capital of the world,” in the neon-lit words of…Continue Reading
“We will never be the same,” ran the popular refrain after 9/11, and as we continue to unpack that sentiment in the various parts of our lives, it seems a fitting enough epigram for the state of book publishing nearly four months into the post-terror twilight. Something has changed, all right. But across the industry…Continue Reading
PEOPLE Congrats to Phyllis Grann — and Random House — who have finally tied the knot in what is perhaps the last good news of ’01? Word is that not all publishers there are equally excited, leading to speculation about whether the last card has yet been played. Back at Penguin Putnam, Adrian Zackheim has…Continue Reading
Sales of Book Businesses Plummet, But the Big Keep Getting Bigger In the third quarter of this year, merger and acquisition activity in trade book and other consumer publishing segments plummeted more than 40%, according to industry figures tracked by investment banking firm Whitestone Communications. Despite a flurry of speculation over sales — for example,…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
When federal agents in Las Vegas hauled poor Dmitry Sklyarov off to jail on July 16 for hacking into Adobe’s ebook software, the 26-year-old Russian’s arrest proved a disastrous outing for the much-maligned Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the 1998 law under which Sklyarov was detained. As hackers and civil libertarians lined up to blast…Continue Reading
