Molly Stern has been officially cleared to join the Crown Publishing Group as svp, publisher of the Crown and Broadway imprints, starting immediately and reporting to president Maya Mavjee. Mavjee reiterates, as she noted in restructuring the Crown group in late April, that Stern will oversee the two lines’ “traditional areas of expertise” which span a variety of “narrative nonfiction areas,” but with Stern’s personal focus on fiction she will also work to “grow and to provide a new vision and director for [their] fiction publishing program.”
Stern was editorial director of fiction and executive editor at Viking, where she was under contract. Reportedly, Penguin Group was requiring payment from Crown to release Stern from that contract.
Anjali Singh will join the Simon & Schuster imprint as a senior editor on September 20, “casting a wide net for all kinds of nonfiction and fiction – literary, graphic, and commercial” according to publisher Jonathan Karp. She had been at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt most recently, leaving there in 2008.
Chronicle has hired Kelli Chipponeri as executive editor, children’s. She was previously children’s editorial director at Running Press. Other recent hires include Leigh Saffold as associate managing editor, custom publishing. In promotions, Kim Romero and Laura Lee Mattingly have both moved up to associate editor.
Apple has hired Georgina Atwell as iBookstore in the UK, the Bookseller reports. She had been online director at DK and was working as a digital consultant since last fall.
Actor Emma Thompson has been commissioned by publisher Frederick Warne to write a new Peter Rabbit story, which she intends to set in Scotland. Warne’s Jennifer Cooper confirms to the BBC they “are currently in talks with Thompson regarding her writing a Peter Rabbit story to commemorate 110 years of Peter Rabbit in 2012.”
BBC
In distribution news, Ingram Publisher Services will distribute Fox Chapel Publishing and–more unusually–veteran self-publisher Vantage Press, which intends to release three seasonal lists beginning in spring 2011.