HarperCollins Christian Publishing, the new division comprising Zondervan and the recently-acquired Thomas Nelson, announced its new organizational structure under president and ceo Mark Schoenwald. Most of the executive team draws from the Thomas Nelson side. Among the announcements: Stuart Bitting has been named svp, chief financial officer, while Annette Bourland and David Moberg will be svp, publisher of Zondervan and Thomas Nelson, respectively. Chip Brown moves up to svp, Bible Publishing, and Paul Engle has been named svp, Church, Academic and Reference Resources; Stan Gundry remains Zondervan editor-in-chief while Eric Shanfelt moves up to svp, eMedia. Tod Shuttleworth is SVP Spanish and International Publishing; Carol Nygren is Managing Director Live Events Management; Tom Knight is svp, Sales; Rachel Barach is General Manager Bible Gateway; Al Kerkstra, svp Support Operations and Human Resources; and Casey Harrell is director of corporate communications.
Laura Hopper has joined Hyperion as editorial director of franchise publishing, based on the West Coast, focusing on identifying, developing, and editing new print and digital projects within the Disney/ABC Television Group for Hyperion. Hopper was vp of the motion picture department for Brillstein-Grey Entertainment, and most recently she represented writer and director clients on various film and television projects.
Victoria Comella has joined HarperCollins 360 as publicity manager. Previously she was a publicist at Putnam.
At Touchstone, Shida Carr has been promoted to assistant director of publicity. She has been at Touchstone for 12 years.
Caitlin Mulrooney-Lyski has joined Grand Central as senior publicist. She was most recently at Penguin as publicist for Riverhead Trade Paperback, Perigee, Berkley and NAL paperback lists.
In the UK, Sophie Brewer has joined Constable & Robinson for 6 months to work alongside rights director, Eryl Humphrey Jones, to further enhance their contact base, particularly in the US, and to consult on wider rights issues. She was rights director at Penguin until 2008 and now works as a consultant in publishing and as a coach.
UK-based publishing outsource services company Maverick Publishing Specialists has hired former Independent Publisher’s Guild executive director Sheila Bounford as affiliate associate on their senior strategy team. Other newly-hired affiliate associates include Sarah Boucher, joining the EMEA based marketing and sales division (she was at Norton and ProQuest); Jenny Drey in the marketing and market research team; and Julie Gordon in the technology and content division (who joined earlier in the year, now working there full time)
A month after having surgery, author Judy Blume blogs about learning that she had breast cancer and deciding to have a mastectomy. She says the prognosis is positive: “The cancer hadn’t spread anywhere. I don’t need chemo which is a whole other ballgame. (I’m considering taking a daily med but haven’t yet made up my mind.) Also, I’m older, which is very different from being diagnosed when you’re young.”
In other author news, biographer Blake Bailey told the NYT that he will write a biography of Philip Roth with the author’s cooperation, expected to take 8 to 10 years to complete. Bailey has not submitted a proposal to publishers yet, but indicates to the paper he “signed a collaboration agreement guaranteeing him unlimited access to Roth’s archives and correspondence, and help in encouraging friends to cooperate and that he had already spent several marathon sessions interviewing the 79-year-old novelist.” As the paper notes, from 2004 to 2009 Roth had been cooperating with Ross Miller on a biography, but “that arrangement was abandoned by mutual consent.”
Follett has sold certain assets of Book Wholesalers, Inc. to Baker & Taylor as part of “a strategic decision by the Follett School & Library Group to concentrate on the PreK-12 market.”
Graphic Arts Books has acquired the trade titles and publishing rights of Pruett Publishing Company in order to build and expand its imprint, WestWinds Press. Pruett, based in Boulder, CO, was founded in 1954 and specializes in western regional publishing.
As of September 1, Bookmasters has started handling sales and distribution in the US for Edibesa, a publisher of Catholic books in Spanish.