Gary Heidt has left FinePrint Literary Management to form Signature Literary Agency in partnership with Ellen Pepus in Washington, DC. Pepus worked at Graybill and English before starting her own agency. At the Simon & Schuster imprint, assistant managing editor Michael Szczerban in now an assistant editor, reporting to editor-in-chief Priscilla Painton. Kate Ankofski has been promoted to assistant editor.
Archives for January 2009
Amazon Beats the Street (and Passes BN)
Anaysts exected Amazon to stumble in the fourth quarter due to the economy and the etailer surprised investors with another strong report card. Sales increased 18 percent to $6.70 billion as operating income was flat at $272 million. Net income rose 9 percent to $225 million in the fourth quarter, or 52 cents per share. (Analysts were expecting only 39 cents a share, and sales of $6.44 billion.) For the coming quarter, the company expects sales to continue growing from between 9 percent and 19 percent. North American media sales (defined as sales from all sellers in categories such as […]
People
Isabel White has left Brie Burkeman to set up her own London-based agency representing high-quality, entertaining fiction and nonfiction. Sandy Lu of the Vanguard Literary Agency is joining Lori Perkins at the L. Perkins Agency as an associate agent. Fredric Nachbaur has been named Director of Fordham University Press effective February 17. Most recently he was marketing and sales director at NYU Press. A memorial service for critic, editor and novelist John Leonard will be held on Monday, March 2 at 6:00 PM at Landmark on the Park, 160 Central Park West. Toni Morrison, Victor Navasky, Gloria Steinem, Eugenia Zukerman, […]
Washington Post to Drop Book World
As the NBCC first reported on their blog, the Washington Post will drop its standalone book review section: “The last issue of Book World in print will be the February 15, 2009 issue. Thereafter, content will be split between the Outlook section and Style & Arts on Sundays. Daily book reviews in Style will continue. The promise is that there will be four additional broadsheet pages in Outlook for book coverage and one additional page in Style & Arts. That’s an equivalent of 12 tabloid pages. (Book World is 16 pages.) Jonathan Yardley’s reviews will appear in Outlook. Michael Dirda’s […]
Sales Flat at Rodale
As a private company, Rodale’s annual press release about their performance traditionally celebrates all the things that went well and little else. Today the company says that sales for 2008 were essentially flat, down 0.5 percent from the year before (when sales were $632 million). In the books division, they celebrate sales of “more than 1.5 million copies of Eat This, Not That! and more than 1.3 million copies of Flat Belly Diet!” The company says “Rodale Books saw a 3.5 percent increase across both trade and direct channels” and they claim that “revenues from books sold online increased 47 […]
Having Asked for Consumer Fair, Canadian Publishers Start to Snub New Reed Effort
Reed Exhibitions created their proposal for a consumer book fair in Toronto in the fall in response to publisher requests (and complaints about the inefficacy of Book Expo Canada). But now Random House Canada has announced that they are disappointed in the plans for the new fair and will not participate. Spokesperson Tracy Turriff says in a statement, “We attended a presentation about the plans for the show, and a number of challenges were raised, including basic elements like the venue and timing for the show. We are concerned that it will be difficult for this show to achieve success […]