Derek Krissoff has been named the new editor in chief for the University of Nebraska Press, effective July 16. He has been a senior acquisitions editor at the University of Georgia Press since 2006.
John W. Warren has joined Georgetown University Press as marketing and sales director. He has spent the past twelve years as marketing director of RAND Corporation’s publications department.
KC Smythe will retire on June 15 from his position as national account manager at Hachette Book Group, after 10 years with the company. Prior to Hachette, he spent 17 years at Ingram, mostly in the buying department, and 6 years as a retail bookseller at B. Dalton and Nashville’s independent Mills Bookstore. He can be reached at smytheville@att.net.
Founder of Callaway Digital Arts Nicholas Callaway is stepping back from his role as chief creative officer after the company closed its New York office two weeks ago and moved all operations to San Francisco. Callaway will remain involved as chief creative advisor, but Digital Book World reports he “is involved in a new interactive venture launching next week,” sure to be positioned as another would-be game changer.
Worthy Publishing has hired Sherrie Slopianka as executive director of online sales (she was at Ingram), and Margaret Brock as manager of sales coordination and content management (she was in sales at Cisco Systems/ServiceSource).
At Interweave Books, Mary KinCannon has been promoted to project manager, reporting to Susanne Woods, while Julia Boyles has been promoted to senior designer.
A MONSTER CALLS by Patrick Ness has won both the Carnegie Medal for best children’s book and the Kate Greenaway Medal for illustration (by Jim Kay), the first time one book has won both awards. Ness has won the Carnegie two years in a row.
Harper Collins has launched an interactive online for readers and fans of their books for teens. Called the Epic Reads network, it comprises a “hub” at EpicReads.com, and PitchDark.com for dystopian and paranormal fiction and StoryCrush.com for romance and contemporary teen fiction.
In a rare instance of agreement, ABA ceo Oren Teicher‘s letter to the Department of Justice about the proposed settlement in the ebook pricing case makes some of the same points that Barnes & Noble raised in their filing. Like BN, he argues that the settlement is too broad and imposes penalties not sought in the original lawsuit: “DOJ should not be imposing in the consent decree a remedy that they do not seek in their complaint and that they could not obtain if they proved their allegation of collusion on the merits.” He also echoes the argument that the settlement punishes the wrong parties: “IndieCommerce and its ABA member stores should not be penalized by having their and the Google agency agreements set aside, when these were freely negotiated contracts that no one has alleged were the product of collusion.”
Again, similar to BN’s position, Teicher says the agency model has been pro-competitive, allowing additional retailers to enter the market, and he says prices have fallen as a result: “The Agency Model has clearly lowered retail prices to indie bookstore customers. Since the introduction of the agency model, publishers have dropped their retail prices for e-books, and there has been far more significant e-book price competition among publishers, including significant promotions and discounts that indie bookstores can pass on to customers. Not only are indie bookstore customers paying lower prices, indie bookstores report that average prices to booksellers dropped $2 – $5 per unit or more after Agency was introduced, while sales of e-books have significantly increased.”
In Thursday’s Penguin international sales announcement, they gave us the incorrect spelling for Cristi Hall, and we misspelled Devin Kirk Luna‘s name in pasting.