The Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association has hired Deborah Leonard as their new executive director, taking over from Jim Dana, who is retiring (and plans to work for the Peace Corps in Lesotho). Leonard was most recently a sales manager at Cengage Learning, and started her publishing career as a bookseller in Nashville, TN for ZIbart’s.
Penguin UK digital publisher Jeremy Ettinghausen is leaving, to become a creative director at the advertising agency BBH.
This year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade will include a Diary of a Wimpy Kid balloon.
Copyright Clearance Center has expanded its European presence and opened a new European subsidiary RightsDirect. Kim Zwollo has been hired as general manager of RightsDirect; most recently was he was an evp, sales at Springer Science + Business Media. He is joined by Victoriano Colodron as executive director, collective licensing and operations (he was formerly deputy ceo of the Spanish Reproduction Rights Organization) and Kate Alzapiedi as business development director. The unit “enables rightsholders and users in Europe to have access to voluntary licensing systems that have been available in the US.
We received further clarification late yesterday on Zondervan’s distribution relationship with Ingram Publisher Services. It’s designed to expand sales for more of the trade independent bookstore market than Zondervan can currently cover. The arrangement does not impact any of the publisher’s current distribution or sales efforts.