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People, Etc.

November 30, 2011
By Michael Cader

Corinna Barsan will join Grove/Atlantic as senior editor on December 5, where she will acquire and edit literary fiction as well as some narrative nonfiction. Previously she was senior editor at Other Press. Also at Grove, Amy Hundley has been promoted to senior editor and rights director.

The UK joint venture Abrams & Chronicle Books has promoted David Gooding to managing director. He has been acting managing director since this
summer, prior to which he was international sales director.

British Columbia bookseller Lee Trentadue, who was due to step up from vice president to president of the Canadian Booksellers Association, has resigned from the organization’s board instead. She tells Quill and Quire, “Basically, I felt for the last year and half that decisions were being made that I had no knowledge of,” citing the limited connection between Canadian indies and Google eBooks as a particular example.

In another compression of sales staff, the UK’s Hodder & Stoughton and Headline will merge their efforts into a single regional sales force as of January 2012. Together they will divide sales across seven territories, up from five regions, but four of their respective regional sales managers are leaving as part of the reorganization.

Penguin ceo John Makinson told a Reuters media summit, “It is tougher to predict how we will be 12 months from now, as an industry, than pretty much at any time that I can remember.” Reuters adds, “he said that even though the book business was by its nature defensive, structural changes in the industry that were largely outside the control of publishers made it very hard to predict next year’s performance.

Makinson observed, “This is a business which has always been driven very much by supply rather than demand factors. Consumer taste doesn’t actually change all that much but what does change is the availability of books in different channels.” He said he sees “dark clouds” when looking into the year ahead.

In a brief update, Amazon spokesperson Sarah Gelman responded to our query about whether the company expected to continue their Powered by Amazon program as The Domino Project wraps up, saying it remains their “intention to provide this set of services to others.” She declined to indicate when the next partner might be named.

Starting in 2012, Orbit will expand the digital short fiction publishing program they started in April to Orbit UK.

Hachette Book Group has issued a progress report on a comprehensive environmental policy first announced two years ago. Hachette says it has reduced its carbon footprint by 15 percent, “well on our way” to reaching its 20 percent reduction goal by 2020, while it has exceeded its goal in increasing the use of forest stewardship certified paper in books by 23 percent. The company also points to more efficient warehouse lighting, more efficient printing, and grants to reforest areas in Northern Florida as key parts of its environmental policy. “It’s gratifying to see HBG’s focused efforts on more environmentally conscious publishing resulting in tangible improvement, and we’ll continue to push toward our green goals,” ceo David Young said in a statement.

Filed Under: Free, Personnel

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