"Executing the best possible marketing plans to expand the reach and sales of our authors' books is the crux of what we do as a publisher. Angela will take a more macro and strategic view of our efforts across the entire division to enhance our already successful programs," Morrison said in a statement. "Her proven experience in creating award-winning digital properties from the ground up, and her extensive media background, make her the perfect candidate to further elevate our marketing expertise." Tribelli starts at HarperCollins on February 22.

Vanessa Kehren will join Blue Rider Press as editor on February 27. She was most recently an assistant editor at Little, Brown.

Kristina Holmes is leaving Ebeling and Associates Literary Agency after six years to start her own outfit, The Holmes Agency, where she will continue to focus exclusively on non-fiction projects, specifically in the genres of health and wellness, business, psychology, spirituality, sex, relationships, environmental issues, science, nature, literary nonfiction, and memoir.

At Folio Literary Management, Michael Sterling is now Speakers Bureau manager and coordinates video services for clients. Erin Niumata and Steve Troha have both been promoted to senior vice president.

At Little, Brown Children's, Elizabeth Bewley has been promoted to senior editor. She joined their Poppy imprint in 2008.

In the UK, Dan Shepherd will Hachette Children's Books on May 1 as deputy managing editor, a newly created position within the company. He has been group sales director for Penguin Children's Books UK, working at Penguin for 11 years.

BEA has announced the first of many convention Breakfast authors still to come: Michael Chabon, author of the forthcoming novel TELEGRAPH AVENUE, will be speak during the Thursday morning author breakfast on June 7.

Columbia University Press has begun to distribute Hong Kong University Press in North America as of February 1, taking over from the University of Washington Press.

Polish poet and winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature Wislawa Szymborska died Wednesday of lung cancer at the age of 88. Szymborska published 400 poems during her lifetime, which led to the Nobel committee's citation of her as the "Mozart of poetry."
AP Obit

Following the year's pattern, the gain of $30.7 million in ebook sales over last November couldn't make up for the larger drop in print shipments, as total AAP trade sales declined $29.7 million or 5.7 percent for the month. (Indeed, for the 11 reported months, overall trade dollars are down 5.8 percent compared to 2010, which isn't bad considering the disappearance of Borders and the growth of lower-priced ebooks.)

Children's and YA hardcovers were the biggest gainers after ebooks in the month, at net shipments of $87.2 million up 27 percent compared to a year ago. That made children's hardcovers the second largest trade segment for the month (with ebooks once again just barely in fourth place). Religious books--which we don't count as trade, but the AAP does--also rose slightly for the month. Below is the updated version of our chart helping to track monthly ebook sales patterns:

Net income was meager as predicted--$177 million or 38 cents a share, down 58 percent from a year ago--though here the company exceeded analysts' diminished expectations of 19 cents a share, and at the high end of what were disappointing expectations when announced in October. The company forecasts slower growth for the first quarter (expected to be up 22 percent to 36 percent, from $12 billion at $13.4 billion) and lower income of anywhere from a $200 million loss to a $100 million gain. Analysts had been expecting Q1 sales of $13.4 billion, so the reduced guidance is also weighing on shares. While Amazon's own sales grew less than expected, third-party sales increased, comprising 36 percent of all units sold, up from 32 percent a year ago.

Media sales remain the laggard at the company (up 15 percent), and North American Media sales, which should be booming thanks to ebooks and still-growing print book sales as the etailer picks up market share in the wake of Borders' closing, rose just 8 percent, at $2.56 billion for the quarter. In a conference call with analysts, cfo Tom Szkutak confirmed that North American sales of print books had "double-digit year-over-year" growth, and he indicated they saw "very strong growth in digital media, from books to video, music." The drag on media growth was attributed to the sizable market for video games and consoles, which lacked new devices this holiday. (The US market is roughly $30 billion; NPD recently estimated that video game console sales in December were down 32 percent. Szkutak said that video units (both consoles and game software) were up, but revenue declined.

For the full year, NA media rose 15 percent, at $7.959 billion. That makes Amazon's North American media business larger than Barnes & Noble (which forecasts full-year sales of $7 billion to $7.2 billion), but across a wider range of merchandise and divisions. International media sales are now far larger than North America, at $3.447 billion for the quarter, and grew at 20 percent, and registered $9.82 billion for the year.

The company had little to say about Kindle device sales, as usual. They repeated last week's statistic, that device sales were up 177 percent compared to whatever they were a year ago. On the investor call, Szkutak reinforced that "unit sales nearly tripled...on a very good base."
Release

In other corporate news, Deal Reporter says that "three sources briefed on the matter" indicate that McGraw-Hill is preparing to sell their Education division at auction rather than spin it off to shareholders at the end of the year, as currently planned. Advisors Goldman Sachs and Evercore are said to be working on the deal, with a hoped-for valuation of roughly $3 billion. Note that the story is misattributed by some to the FT, which carries some Deal Reporter stories on its site. (You may recall that DR stories are always interesting, but not necessarily accurate.)

The notion of selling the division outright is plausible, since the realignment of McGraw Hill was driving by investors less interested in the slower-growing, less profitabl education group in the first place. But their suggestion of possible bidders reads like pure guessing. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is already reported to be looking at another refinancing (and controlling owner John Paulson is overextended in other ways after a poor trading year in 2011); Apax-owned Cengage has said they will need to refinance as well.
DR

Among the Doubleday writers he edited were Dwight D. Eisenhower, Wallace Stegner, Duke Ellington, Bruce Catton, Arthur Hailey, Leon Uris, Irving Stone, Thor Heyerdahl, and Fannie Flagg.
AP obit

Market Partners' monthly Publishing Trends newsletter has been acquired by EPM Communications' Content Licensing Network and will be absorbed into Content Licensing, their new bi-monthly newsletter covering "the marketing and distribution of media and entertainment properties across platforms." MPI will contribute to future issues of Content Licensing, and they retain the PublishingTrends.com domain,  where they will continue to examine "new ideas within the publishing community and focusing on areas in which MPI has special expertise."

At Viking, Julie Miesionczek has been promoted to associate editor, reporting to Rick Kot and Amber Qureshi. Maggie Riggs has been promoted to assistant editor, reporting to Wendy Wolf and Josh Kendall.

Senior editor at FSG Paul Elie is leaving the publishing house to join the Georgetown University faculty as a senior fellow with the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, working out of New York. Elie has been with FSG since 1993, and as part of his new position he will work on book projects and direct a partnership between Georgetown and Brooklyn-based nonprofit organization StoryCorps.

Copyright Clearance Center board member Roy S. Kaufman will step down from the board and join the non-profit as an employee, serving as managing director of new ventures, reporting to CEO Tracey Armstrong. Based in New York, Kaufman will be responsible for "expanding capabilities as CCC develops new services for authors, publishers and other rightsholders."

Random House has promoted three executives to senior vice president: Jim Johnston (worldwide reporting & planning), Mariella Molloy (corporate services), and Bill Sinnott (payroll, credit & disbursements).

Juliette van Wersch has been promoted to associate publisher of Dutch imprint A.W. Bruna Fiction, part of De Arbeiderspers/Bruna. She joined Bruna in 2006 and will continue to acquire crime fiction from the US and the UK, while also developing  the commercial women’s fiction list. Van Wersch will report to publisher Steven Maat.

Roy Kaufman has joined the Copyright Clearance Center as managing editor for new ventures, responsible for expanding capabilities as CCC develops new services for authors, publishers and other rightsholders. Previously he was lead counsel for Wiley's STM and Scholarly publishing business.

Barnes & Noble announced the finalists for its Discover Great New Writers Award, with the winners to be announced on March 7:

Fiction:

Alan Heathcock, Volt (Graywolf Press)
Alice LaPlante, Turn of Mind (Atlantic Monthly Press)
Scott O’Connor, Untouchable (Tyrus Books, a division of F+W Media, Inc.)

Nonfiction:

Annia Ciezadlo, Day of Honey (Free Press)
Joshua Cody, [sic] (W.W. Norton)
Michael Levy, Kosher Chinese (Henry Holt & Co.)

The Book Industry Charitable Group, also known as the Borders Group Foundation, will expand its mission and offer financial and other assistance to those in the bookselling industry. They also announced that 14 people have joined the Board of Directors, with former Borders executive Lisa Smolla-Hollo named president and former Borders president and vice chairman George Mrkonic named external chairman.

As noted previously, entrepreneur Praveen Madan is leading "a volunteer transition team [that] has begun work on a comprehensive development, financial and operational plan" for the store. Among the initiatives they are considering are: POD, "an e-book friendly in-store browsing experience; concierge services to provide 'literary matchmaking' for customers, book swaps and other innovative programs to bring people of all ages together around their shared love of books; and a speaker’s bureau with readership development services for emerging authors." They are launching a new capital campaign this month to raise $100,000 to support ongoing operations at the store.
Release

Kristin Cochrane has been promoted to svp, Random House Canada, in addition to her continuing duties as publisher of Doubleday Canada.

At Knopf Canada, Marion Garner has been promoted to associate publisher, adding that to her duties as publisher of Vintage Canada, reporting to Louise Dennys. In addition, Amanda Lewis has been promoted to associate editor.

The American Booksellers Association (ABA) is partnering with The Center for Fiction to promote their annual Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize. Fifty booksellers will be asked to serve as "first-tier readers" of candidates for the prize, and 450 bookstores will receive tabletop displays, posters and shelf talkers for the seven finalists.

Center for Fiction Executive Director Noreen Tomassi says, “We believe that there are no better readers than the people who continue against all seeming odds to own and operate independent bookstores.  We are thrilled that we will be working with ABA, an organization we admire so much, to include these booksellers as readers and to feature the short-listed books at more than 450 stores all across the country.”

Barnes & Noble's is bringing back their BN Recommends program with a new selection, William Landay's DEFENDING JACOB, published today by Delacorte. A spokesperson tells us they are "resuming a regular Recommends program" again. The last BN pick was the April 2011 selection, Gary D. Schmidt's middle-grade novel OKAY FOR NOW.

At Triumph Books, Adam Motin has been promoted to managing editor, Noah Amstadter moves up to senior acquisitions editor, Jess Jordan has been promoted to associate editor, and current editorial director Don Gulbrandsen will move into an at-large role focusing on strategic initiatives, acquisitions and management of selected projects as he pursues a graduate degree.

Malcolm Gladwell will give the closing address at the AAP's General Annual Meeting, which will be held on March 14 at the McGraw-Hill Conference Center. The US Copyright Office's Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante will give the opening keynote.
Full AAP agenda

Over the weekend the NYT profiled FSG publisher and president Jonathan Galassi and his upcoming (and very personal) poetry collection LEFT-HANDED, which Knopf will publish in March.

In corporate news, on Friday Harlequin announced the purchase of Barbour Publishing's Heartsong Presents Book Club. The direct-to-consumer operation provides members with four new titles a month, focusing on Christian romance. Purchase terms were not disclosed.

Jennifer Doerr has joined Yale University Press as senior publicist. She previously held director of publicity positions at Macmillan Children's and Skyhorse Publishing.

At Random House Children's, Chelsea Eberly was promoted to associate editor.

In the UK, Bloomsbury is launching a new imprint, Circus, "unashamedly literary" and publishing "mostly fiction." They will publish 9 books the first year, growing to four titles a month thereafter. Saying they are "determined to make our books look more desirable and collectible than ever," Circus titles will be published as "unusually-sized trade paperbacks with photographic covers, wide flaps and colour printing inside the cover." The line launches May 10 with Will Davis's THE TRAPEZE ARTIST.

Red Wheel/Weiser, Conari Press, Hampton Roads Publishing, and Hierophant Publishing are collaborating on a new venture to help authors of spiritual and self-help books who want to self-publish called Turning Stone Press. The new venture provides complete editorial and production services including copyediting, book and cover design, all overseen by Red Wheel/Weiser's art and production directors. Print and digital editions of each book will be available through all major retail channels. "Turning Stone Press provides a unique opportunity for authors to work with the best editorial, production, and marketing personnel in the spiritual and self-help genre, the same people who select and produce all the other books in the Red Wheel/Weiser, Conari Press, Hampton Roads, and Hierophant publishing family," said president of Hampton Roads Publishing and Hierophant Publishing Randy Davila in a statement.

Lee & Low Books has acquired Children's Book Press, founded in 1975 as one of the first specialty publishers devoted to multicultural children's books. Children's Book Press will continue to operate as a separate imprint, and the deal increases the number of Lee & Low titles in print to approximately 650. "This is a tremendous honor for us to keep the prestigious collection of Children’s Book Press alive, and have the opportunity to build on its 36-year history,” said Lee & Low Books publisher Jason Low in a statement.

It's very rare for us to use the phrase "must read," but Nielsen's white paper on The Link Between Metadata and Sales that accompanies president of Nielsen Book Jonathan Nowell's Wednesday presentation certainly qualifies. First presented at our Publishers Launch event in Frankfurt and now expanded and revised, it demonstrates with great precision the clear extent to which more quality metadata increases book sales (based on UK data). Fiction shows the greatest improvement when four key "enhanced" elements--short and long descriptions, review and author biography--are included in the record. Online sales for titles with all four of those pieces of information included are 178 percent higher.
PDF download

Verso Digital's survey of book-buying behavior is viewable here.

From futurist, author and Wednesday speaker David Houle--who is working with Sourcebooks on their just-announced agile publishing initiative--there is a free download of a special edition of his 2007 book THE SHIFT AGE. The DBW edition includes a new introduction tied to his speech and 15 of his past columns "that pertain to the the publishing industry and its move into the Shift Age."
Sourcebooks

At the Digital Book World site, a short video presents brief interviews with presenters including Ellen Archer at Hyperion, James McQuivey of Forrester, Steve Potash at OverDrive and Evan Ratliff from The Atavist.
DBW video