Just a year after bringing in William Lynch as ceo of Barnes & Noble.com and grooming him for bigger things at the company, this morning it was announced that he will take over as ceo of all of Barnes & Noble, Inc. In a second promotion, chief operating officer Mitchell Klipper moves up to the newly-created position ceo of the retail stores group. Current ceo Steve Riggio will keep the position of vice chairman and remain “actively involved in the company.” In a conference call this morning, chairman Len Riggio said “today’s announcement brings much joy to Steve and me. […]
Archives for March 2010
People, Awards, Distribution and More Announcements
Matt Martz has been promoted to associate editor at St. Martin’s, continuing to report to Kelley Ragland, editorial director of Minotaur. Brigid Pasulka won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for her debut novel A LONG LONG TIME AGO & ESSENTIALLY TRUE. Columbia University awarded the Bancroft history prize to three books: Linda Gordon’s Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits; Woody Holton’s Abigail Adams; and Margaret Jacobs’s White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940. Penguin Children’s announced a one-million-copy first printing for the May release of John […]
Posner Admits that His Book Copies Passages
Continuing to own the author retraction beat (thankfully without broad value judgments about the entire industry), the AP reports an admission from Gerald Posner that his fall 2009 book MIAMI BABYLON includes passages that come from Frank Owen’s CLUBLAND. Posner blamed faulty research methodology, and concedes “if you use something from another book, a statement from another book, it needs to be in quotations, or if you take something and put it in your own syntax and grammar, you still need to cite it.” He adds, “without going through every line I can’t be 100 percent sure, but I think […]
Workman Hires Bob Miller
Announced in a press release yesterday mere minutes after Lunch Deluxe was published, as you probably know now Workman Publishing founder Peter Workman has hired Harper Studio founder Bob Miller for the new role of group publisher, starting May 3, to “work with the current teams at the Workman, Algonquin, and Artisan imprints to make those successful programs even stronger in the ever-changing publishing landscape.” Workman continues as president and CEO, but notes “I’ve reached a time in my life when I need to look to the future of the company and to make changes. As part of our leadership […]
Buy Button Bingo
With the launch of the iPad and its accompanying iBookstore just over two weeks away, the transition to an agency model for ebooks remains both contentious and uncertain. It is not at all clear whether any significant number of independent publishers will be signed with Apple and available for direct sale in their store on launch, just as it remains uncertain whether other publishers will experience interruption in their business with Amazon as Macmillan did while negotiating their transition to the new model. At least one independent publisher of scale was told categorically by Amazon in a recent phone call […]
New BEA Program will Connect Authors to Readers Across NYC
BEA officially announced their plans for the “New York Book Week” concept that has been under formulation for some time, designed “to expand on the presence of BEA in New York by making even more authors available to the community” at “a wide range of author events at various literary venues.” The idea is to help connect many of the authors who come to New York for the convention to readers and fans as well as to members of the trade. Participating authors already include Lee Child, Jonathan Franzen, Ira Glass, Sara Gruen, David Means, Edmund Morris and Scott Turow. […]