HarperCollins has hired Adrianna Dufay and Brian Perrin, both serving as executive director, digital product development, reporting to Carrie Bloxson. They will “help conceptualize and develop new digital platforms and products for individual genres and titles,” across apps, e-books, social gaming, and video products, along with helping to harness “emerging product technology and capabilities in support of the imprints.”
Dufay has been at JPMorgan Chase and AOL; she will work with Avon, William Morrow, Morrow trade paperbacks, Voyager, and HarperOne. Perrin was part of the start-up team at NBC Publishing most recently and will work with Amistad, Ecco, Harper, Harper Business, Harper Design, Harper Perennial, Harper trade paperbacks, and It Books.
Additionally, Ana Maria Allessi has been given the new title of vp, digital innovation, reporting to chief digital officer Chantal Restivo-Alessi, while continuing to serve as publisher of Harper Audio. Allessi will be “planning and executing global digital innovation strategies across all divisions of the company,” including “surfacing best practices for global product development, and furthering partnerships with new and existing retail and technology partners,” and aims to “further enhance Harper Collins’ global offer of services to authors.”
At Random House, Lori de Reza has been promoted to director, Crawfordsville Operations, overseeing Random House’s Indiana distribution center. She has been with the company for two decades.
In awards news, Katherine Boo, Steven Pinker and Wade Davis are among the six nonfiction authors shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize.
This year’s National Book Award nominees will be announced next Wednesday, October 10 on MSNBC’s MORNING JOE some time between 6AM and 9AM Eastern (so between noon and 3PM in Frankfurt).
With the Nobel Prize for Literature announcement due as soon as October 11, UK bettors have installed Haruki Murakami as the favorite, at 3-1, while William Trevor’s odds were cut from 100-1 to 10-1 for third-favorite (Mo Yan, at 8-1, is next-favorite to win.)