Amazon announced to a group of agents Sunday night that Larry Kirshbaum will leave agenting and return to publishing, serving as vp and publisher for Amazon Publishing’s New York office, effective immediately (officially starting July 5). Kirshbaum, who celebrates his birthday on Monday, says “On my sixty-seventh birthday, I’m reinventing myself.” Reporting to Amazon’s Jeff Belle, Kirshbaum is charged with building something that will look like a general trade publisher, with “a specific focus on non-fiction, but also literary fiction,” Belle says, since Amazon has already been rolling out other imprints focused on genre fiction. In the note to agents, […]
Archives for May 2011
People, Etc.
Karen Ball is joining the Steve Laube Agency. For nearly 30 years she has worked on successful fiction lines at Tyndale, Multnomah, Zondervan, and, most recently, the B&H Publishing Group, where she was an executive editor. She will work from her office in Oregon. Publishing veteran Elizabeth Van Doren joined Highlights for Children and Boyds Mills Press as executive editor, book publishing. At Vintage UK, Victoria Murray-Browne has been named editor and Kate Watson joins as press officer. Previously Murray-Browne was an editor at John Murray and Watson was acting press officer at Dorling Kindersley.
Michael Crichton’s Last Book, Finished By Robert Preston, Set for November
When Michael Crichton died in November 2008 he was working on another thriller. At the time, Harper publisher Jonathan Burnham told us that he left behind approximately 90 manuscript pages of a novel-in-progress, along with detailed notes for the rest of the book. The following spring an assistant discovered a different, completed Crichton manuscript that was published later that year as PIRATE LATITUDES. Now HarperCollins has announced publication this fall for the completed version of that manuscript Crichton was working on before he died. Completed by Richard Preston, it will be published as MICRO, about a biotech company in Hawaii […]
Neal Pollack On Self-Publishing His Next Novel–And Keeping His Agent
Neal Pollack is the latest traditionally-published author to give self e-publishing a try this September, for his next novel JEWBALL, “a funny, gritty noir about a barnstorming Philadelphia Jewish basketball team in the late 1930s who battle for supremacy on and off the court under the growing shadow of anti-Semitism. He writes about it in the Sunday Times Book Review, with less fire and brimstone than some authors who have gone the same route: “For a writer like me, which is to say, most working writers — midcareer, midlist, middle-aged, more or less middlebrow, and somewhat Internet savvy — self-publishing […]
In April, Borders Has $32.1 Million Operating Loss–And $132.2 Million Total Loss
Borders reported sales of $101 million for the month of April and “other revenue” (primarily from the liquidators) of $72.1 million–producing an operating loss of $32.1 million. But they lost another $98.4 million in “reorganization items” that includes “amounts related to estimated claims arising from the closure of certain stores and the rejection of related leases.” The total one-month tally is sales of $173.1 million, and a net loss of $132.2 million. The monthly operating loss appears to be growing–for most of March it was $24.3 million, and for most of February it was $28.3 million.
Announcements and Awards: Fox Chapel Buys Three Publishers, Commonwealth Winners, and More
Fox Chapel Publishing has announced three acquisitions that significantly expand the verticals covered by the company, which had been focused on woodworking. They bought crafts and hobby publisher Design Originals, known for their Zentangle series; The Heliconia Press, a publisher of books and magazines on the outdoors (including kayaking and ice fishing); and parenting publisher Plain White Press. Aminatta Forna from Sierra Leone prevailed over David Mitchell and others to win the overall Commonwealth Prize for her novel THE MEMORY OF LOVE. (The book was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and was an Indie Next selection.) New Zealander Craig Cliff […]