Lara Lea Allen is joining Barer Literary as foreign rights director. She was sssociate director of foreign rights at Trident Media Group. Barer Literary’s UK rights will continue to be handled by Caspian Dennis at Abner Stein.
Marissa Walsh has joined FinePrint Literary Management as a literary agent, focusing on children’s picture books, middle-grade and YA, along with pop culture, humor, narrative non-fiction, and memoir. Most recently she was an editor at Delacorte Press/Random House Children’s Books for seven years.
Scott Turow was formally elected president of the Authors Guild, taking over from Roy Blount, who served for four years. Blount’s advice: “See this Google thing through, make sure Amazon doesn’t take over the book industry, find out why e-book royalty rates are so shamefully low, and keep the digital pirates at bay. The rest should take care of itself.”
Judy Blume was elected vice president, and Meg Cabot, Michelle Richmond and T.J. Stiles joined the Guild’s executive council, and the council appointed Michelle Richmond to fill a vacancy on the board.
Sourcebooks has acquired the book assets of Minneapolis-based greeting card, gift and stationery publisher Marianne Richmond Studios. The list comprises 64 board books, mini-books and gift books, all written and illustrated by Richmond. In a Q&A on her site, Richmond wrote previously: “I will always be in favor of self publishing because you maintain more control and revenue. What made it work for me, however, was that I already had sales reps in place when I started doing books. The hardest part, no question, is figuring out distribution.”