At Goldberg McDuffie Communications, Kathleen Zrelak has been promoted to vp, director of publicity.
Author of PLEASE LOOK AFTER MOM Kyung-Sook Shin has won the Man Asian Literary Prize, receiving $30,000. Translator Chi-Young Kim also received US$5,000.
The Bancroft Prize for history is being shared this year by Anne Hyde’s Empires, Nations and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800-1860; Daniel Rodgers’ Age of Fracture; and Tomiko Brown-Nagin’s Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement.
As part of the relocation of Bonnier’s Weldon Owen from Australia to London, Martina Challis has been hired as publisher, reporting to managing director Sarah Odedina, starting in early July. Challis is currently publishing director at Kingfisher UK.
Publisher of IPG client Wings Press, Bryce Milligan writes on Znet that “Amazon’s recent actions have already cut the sales of the small press I run by 40 percent.” On the larger, ongoing dispute with Amazon over terms, he says: “Terms that had been generally accepted across the industry were suddenly not good enough for Amazon, which demanded discounts and practices that IPG — and all of its client publishers — could only have accepted at a loss. Yes, that does mean what it sounds like: To do business with Amazon would mean reducing the profit margin to the point of often losing money on every book or ebook sold.”
As of fall 2012, Consortium will be distributing books for the following new clients: Central Recovery Press, February Books, Global Book Sales, Independent Thinking Press, Torrey House Press, Tyrant Books, Uncivilized Books, and Zuccotti Park Press. In addition, Totem Books is doing business as Icon Books in the US, though Consortium remains their distributor.
Express Publishing, devoted to English language learning materials, will be distributed by Bookmasters and will be sold under a sole source agreement by Sussman Sales Company and its business division, LightSwitch Learning.
Chorion continues to sell off its intellectual property, with PFD and The Rights House acquiring the literary estates of crime writers Margery Allingham, Edmund Crispin, Nicholas Freeling, and Dennis Wheatley. A spokesperson at Chorion told us the deal closed in December, and the only literary estate that remains unsold is George Simenon. (The rights to Raymond Chandler’s literary estate was apparently acquired by a UK-based company last month, but Chorion declined to provide further details about the acquisition at this time.)