Author, agent, film and television producer and publishing executive Stanley L. Colbert died on September 21 in Toronto, Canada. He was Sterling Lord’s original partner in the Lord & Colbert Agency (with Lord handling magazine sales and Colbert selling to book publishers).
As an agent he found a home for Jack Kerouac’s ON THE ROAD after Robert Giroux couldn’t sort out the author’s second manuscript and sent him to Colbert. But Kerouac drove a falling out with Lord and Colbert became an editor at Henry Holt. He moved to LA in 1956 to head the literary department at the William Morris Agency, which led to a long stretch writing and producing movies and TV series.
He re-entered the agency business in Canada at his wife’s Nancy Colbert & Associates, which the family (including son David, also an agent) sold in 1989. The agency became the basis for Toronto’s Westwood Creative, while Colbert became founding president and CEO of Harper Canada.
Separately, Media Source has named company vp, content & business development Ian Singer as publisher for their magazines, comprising School Library Journal, Library Journal, The Horn Book Magazine, and The Horn Book Guide. Publisher Ron Shank “is on leave for personal reasons.” Singer joined the company in May, after serving as vp, data services for Bowker.
Multiple efforts are underway to push imprisoned China writer Lie Xiaobo as a candidate for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, covered this weekend by the NYT.
The ALA’s annual list of the ten most challenged books in America’s libraries for 2009 includes Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series for the first time, coming in at number five. But Laurney Myracle’s TTYL young adult series took over first place, bumping Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell’s picture book about two male penguins raising an orphaned chick AND TANGO MAKES THREE down to number two after three years in the top spot.