Dawn Davis will join the Atria Publishing Group on April 1 as vp, publisher of a new yet-to-be-named imprint, reporting to Judith Curr. Davis was most recently publisher at Amistad. “Dawn Davis has impeccable credentials, great taste, and a discerning eye that enables her to discover unexpected books and unknown authors that go on to receive the highest praise and find wide audiences” Curr said in the announcement. “That she will now be bringing her ample talents to Atria and Simon & Schuster is a boon for us and readers everywhere.”
Hannah Rahill will join Ten Speed Press as vp, associate publisher on March 4, reporting to Aaron Wehner. She was most recent vp, publisher at Weldon Owen’s food & drink division, and at Ten Speed will be primarily responsible for growing the imprint’s core non-fiction categories, including cooking, health, gardening, career/business, and gift/humor, across both print and digital formats. Managing art director Betsy Stromberg, marketing Michele Crim, associate manager, cookbook publicity Kelly Snowden, publicity director Kristin Casemore, and senior publicist Kara Van de Water will all report to Rahill. Current vp, marketing and publicity Patricia Kelly will leave the company after more than seven years.
Journalist Howard Lovy recently joined ForeWord Reviews team in the new position of executive editor.
World Book Night announced further plans for the one-day book giveaway set for April 23, 2013. The previous evening, there will be twelve simultaneous events, including a joint appearance by James Patterson and Ann Patchett at Parnassus Books (which Patchett co-owns), to be announced in full shortly. More than 250 libraries have signed up to give away books as part of the approximately 2,000 WBN host locations, while the WBN special paperback print run of 500,000 copies is coming off the press “ahead of schedule.”
Executive director of WBN Carl Lennertz said in a statement: “So much work has already been done by the booksellers and librarians, the printers and binders, and the great Ingram team. I also want to thank the participating authors and their wonderful publicists who helped me work out the simultaneous event plan, which I’m calling ‘From Berkeley to Boston, Portland to Pass Christian.’ And, ultimately, all credit to the volunteer givers, whose enthusiasm and passion has made reading their applications an emotional and rewarding rollercoaster. There are a lot of people in need in this country, and the givers’ desire to share the joy of a book is something to behold. Whether headed to a nursing home or underfunded school, or, yes, to be given to pub patrons, bus riders, or hotel co-workers, we are seeing an enormous range of thoughtful locations proposed for seeking out light and non-readers.”
Book Revue in Huntington, NY is currently operating without telephone or credit card service after last week’s blizzard, which brought 29 inches of snow to the area. Store co-owner Robert Klein told Newsday he is not sure when to expect service to be restored, while a Verizon official added that “heavy rain” also affected service restoration.
In corporate news, Germany’s Weltbild has sold Poland’s fourth-largest publisher Swiat Ksiazki (founded by Bertelsmann in 1994) to Bukowy Las, which was started in 2010.
Random House UK has created a video featuring such authors as Lee Child, EL James and Ian McEwan on “what Random House means to them.”