Agent Jud Laghi has formed the Jud Laghi Agency. He will continue to be affiliated with LJK Literary Management, where he was a senior agent, and will share office space and collaborate on projects with Kirshbaum and his colleagues. Laghi says, “I’ll continue to represent primarily non-fiction projects, especially narrative, popular culture and business, along with literary fiction and thrillers. And I’m excited to both see, and partake in, what new opportunities will arise for authors in our rapidly evolving industry.”
Barnes & Noble.com has hired Jonathan Shar as general manager, digital newsstand and emerging content, responsible for “creating and leading the digital newsstand and emerging content business, a large strategic focus for the company. He will work with newspaper, magazine, periodical, blogs and other content publishers, to sell and market their digital editorial products.” He was svp and general manager of CNNMoney.com at Time, Inc.
In the UK, Harriet Wilson will join Harper Children’s UK as editorial director, reporting to fiction publishing director, Rachel Denwood. Working alongside editorial director Nick Lake (who will focus on teen and YA), she will “commission and develop authors and series across the fiction list with a particular focus at the younger end.”
As announced Friday, Lorin Stein, 37, will take over as editor of the Paris Review in April when Philip Gourevitch steps down. He has been an editor at Farrar, Straus since 1998. He says: “The Paris Review is an institution like nothing else in American letters. It stands for the newest, the best, the most daring in writing and art, and that’s been the case now for more than fifty years. To be entrusted with that tradition is a true honor.” Publisher Antonio Weiss notes “Lorin has an uncommon literary sensibility and eye for new talent.”
This weekend the Washington Post had a long feature on attorney Bob Barnett‘s “virtual monopoly on the specialty of helping public figures cash in — on power memoirs, on private-sector jobs.” Most of the article won’t be news to publishing people, but among the quotes from Barnett, he says “I’ve turned down many of the purveyors of hate” as potential clients. He also says this about his eclectic client roster: “When you’re a doctor and you’re a Democrat and you help a person and you make them well, that patient can go attack the patients you also heal. But your job is to help them, and that’s what I do as a lawyer. I help Sarah Palin but I also help Barack Obama. That doesn’t trouble me.”
“I could have a partisan law practice,” Barnett says. “Many do. I wouldn’t find that satisfying, because I like to represent a variety of people. I like having dinner with them. I like reading the book when it’s done. I like hearing their ideas. I love debating with them if I don’t agree with them.”
Post
Friday’s issue had the wrong link for JA Konrath’s blog post about his booming self-republished Kindle sales. Here’s the right link for those who are still looking.