Ryan Doherty will move over to Spiegel & Grau as senior editor. He is currently an editor for Ballantine and Random House Trade Paperbacks, and will continue to oversee film tie-in projects for all of Random House Publishing Group.
At Berkley, Leis Pederson has been promoted to editor.
Lisa Grubka will join Fletcher & Company as an agent on August 19. She has been an agent at Foundry Literary + Media for the past four years.
At becker&mayer!, Michael del Rosario has been promoted to managing editor, for the book division.
In another for the annals of outrageous self-promotion (a category that’s had quite a workout this year) police were called to a Burbank, CA Costco store after Joan Rivers handcuffed herself to a shopping cart to protest her newest book, I HATE EVERYTHING…STARTING WITH ME not being available for sale. Rivers’ stunt was filmed by a camera crew and eventually her entire entourage were escorted out of the store without incident. She claims that Costco “banned” her book because of four-letter words used in fake quotes from historical figures on the back cover.