Amanda Ridout, who left Harper UK as managing director in May 2009 to pursue “confidential” ventures, has joined Phaidon as managing director. Investor Luke Johnson, who owned Borders UK on its path to bankruptcy, is joining the Phaidon board as a nonexecutive director.
Emily Lavelle has joined Public Affairs as a publicist. She was most recently an associate publicist at Crown.
Spiegel has posted an English version of their interview with Random House ceo Markus Dohle. The piece drew wire service attention at the beginning of the week for his guess that “I can imagine that we’ll end up above 10 percent next year” in ebook sales in the US. His prediction that “the market share for electronic books, even in the United States, will more likely be between 25 and 50 percent by 2015” is offered as a less aggressive target than the interviewer’s citation of estimates that print sales will decline to just 25 percent of book revenues in 10 years.
The interview doesn’t reveal a lot, though he does point out that Random House is selling directly through the iBookstore–in Germany. “In Germany, however, our books are already in the iBookstore, because there is a fixed book price agreement here, which we expressly support, and because it is easier to reach deals on this basis. In other words, there is no fundamental problem between Apple and us.”
Spiegel
At Westwood Creative Artists, Carolyn Forde will become a shareholder of the agency, “in recognition of her outstanding service.”