People
Mary McGrath is joining Simon & Schuster as director of DSRM, Children’s Sales, reporting to Mary Marotta. She has been at Random House for 17 years and for the past five was the director of sales, adult mass merchandise.
PW has named Amazon ceo Jeff Bezos as their “person of the year.” Primarily a rehash of things you already know, they do elicit a few interesting remarks from Bezos in an interview.
Speaking of physical book sales, he notes that despite Amazon’s deep selection, “the vast majority of sales is in the top tens of thousands of titles, not throughout the long tail.”
And he indicates little interest in acting as publisher as well as a retailer (without closing the door): “I’m not sure we have any skills per se to be a content originator,” he says. “What would we do differently [than publishers]? Why would we be better at it? It’s a well-served industry.”
PW
Speaking of Amazon, everyone in this household was very impressed by the deluxe “collector’s edition” of Tales of Beedle the Bard (produced for Amazon by Andrews McMeel and Lionheart Books, as we reported in October). No one was particularly compelled to read the contents yet, but they certainly enjoyed the physical attributes of the package. Amazon’s own site pictures don’t necessarily do justice to the scale of the package–which is only available from the e-tailer. This Wired blog has pictures that give a better sense of it if you are interested.