Former president, publisher, and editor-in-chief of Doubleday & Co. and later an editor and svp at Random House Sam Vaughan, 83, died in his sleep at home on Monday. Random House writes, “we lost one of the giants and great gentlemen of 20th-century book publishing…. Under Sam’s leadership, Doubleday, which he joined in the fifties and with whom he was synonymous for more than thirty years, was one of America’s leading publishing houses, with a deep list of iconic authors admired by critics, booksellers, and the reading public.”
Among the Doubleday writers he edited were Dwight D. Eisenhower, Wallace Stegner, Duke Ellington, Bruce Catton, Arthur Hailey, Leon Uris, Irving Stone, Thor Heyerdahl, and Fannie Flagg.
AP obit
Market Partners’ monthly Publishing Trends newsletter has been acquired by EPM Communications’ Content Licensing Network and will be absorbed into Content Licensing, their new bi-monthly newsletter covering “the marketing and distribution of media and entertainment properties across platforms.” MPI will contribute to future issues of Content Licensing, and they retain the PublishingTrends.com domain, where they will continue to examine “new ideas within the publishing community and focusing on areas in which MPI has special expertise.”
At Viking, Julie Miesionczek has been promoted to associate editor, reporting to Rick Kot and Amber Qureshi. Maggie Riggs has been promoted to assistant editor, reporting to Wendy Wolf and Josh Kendall.
Senior editor at FSG Paul Elie is leaving the publishing house to join the Georgetown University faculty as a senior fellow with the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, working out of New York. Elie has been with FSG since 1993, and as part of his new position he will work on book projects and direct a partnership between Georgetown and Brooklyn-based nonprofit organization StoryCorps.
Copyright Clearance Center board member Roy S. Kaufman will step down from the board and join the non-profit as an employee, serving as managing director of new ventures, reporting to CEO Tracey Armstrong. Based in New York, Kaufman will be responsible for “expanding capabilities as CCC develops new services for authors, publishers and other rightsholders.”
Random House has promoted three executives to senior vice president: Jim Johnston (worldwide reporting & planning), Mariella Molloy (corporate services), and Bill Sinnott (payroll, credit & disbursements).
Juliette van Wersch has been promoted to associate publisher of Dutch imprint A.W. Bruna Fiction, part of De Arbeiderspers/Bruna. She joined Bruna in 2006 and will continue to acquire crime fiction from the US and the UK, while also developing the commercial women’s fiction list. Van Wersch will report to publisher Steven Maat.
Roy Kaufman has joined the Copyright Clearance Center as managing editor for new ventures, responsible for expanding capabilities as CCC develops new services for authors, publishers and other rightsholders. Previously he was lead counsel for Wiley’s STM and Scholarly publishing business.
Barnes & Noble announced the finalists for its Discover Great New Writers Award, with the winners to be announced on March 7:
Fiction:
Alan Heathcock, Volt (Graywolf Press)
Alice LaPlante, Turn of Mind (Atlantic Monthly Press)
Scott O’Connor, Untouchable (Tyrus Books, a division of F+W Media, Inc.)
Nonfiction:
Annia Ciezadlo, Day of Honey (Free Press)
Joshua Cody, [sic] (W.W. Norton)
Michael Levy, Kosher Chinese (Henry Holt & Co.)
The Book Industry Charitable Group, also known as the Borders Group Foundation, will expand its mission and offer financial and other assistance to those in the bookselling industry. They also announced that 14 people have joined the Board of Directors, with former Borders executive Lisa Smolla-Hollo named president and former Borders president and vice chairman George Mrkonic named external chairman.