Christian Trimmer will join Simon & Schuster Children’s as senior editor on April 15. Previously he was senior editor at Disney-Hyperion.
Wah-Ming Chang has joined Melville House as managing editor. Previously she was a production manager at FSG. In addition, Alex Shephard has been named director of digital marketing, as well as managing editor of the publisher’s MobyLives blog. Shephard is editor-in-chief of online literary magazine Full Stop.
At Random House, Jennifer Javier has been promoted to regional sales manager, International Sales, covering Indonesia and the Philippines. Javier will be based in Manila.
At Hachette Book Group, Ali Coughlin has been promoted to associate national account manager.
In Germany, a correspondent there tells us, Hoffmann & Campe publisher for the last 9 years Gunther Berg has left the company to pursue other interests. A replacement has not been named yet.
Irina Lumelsky has joined United Nations Publications as sales & marketing officer. Previously she was manager, digital rights at McGraw-Hill Professional.
Roger Ebert, 70, died Thursday in Chicago from cancer. Ebert’s film criticism, which spanned 46 years working for the Chicago Sun-Times, won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1975 and was collected in many volumes, including THE GREAT MOVIES series and ROGER EBERT’S FOUR-STAR REVIEWS. His most recent book was the 2011 autobiography LIFE ITSELF.
Unbound, the UK-based publisher that raises book financing from readers and splits the proceeds 50/50 with authors after costs, has retained PFD to represent US and translation rights to their list.
Author of Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading and freelance journalist Lizzie Skurnick will launch an eponymous imprint with Ig Publishing in the fall. The line aims to “bring back the very best in young adult literature, from the classics of the 1930s and 1940s, to the thrillers and social novels of the 1970s and 1980s.”
Both Barnes & Noble ceo William Lynch and stores retail group ceo Mitchell Klipper recently vested so much stock that the company withheld about $2 million worth of shares from each man to cover taxes, according to SEC filings. Both now hold approximately $10 million of stock personally (Lynch has slightly less), and Klipper also has a hefty holding through his 401(k). Also, someone else took a strong interest in BN shares yesterday afternoon. In the final three hours of trading, on heavy volume, the stock took a sudden lift of over $1 a share. It could be the usual vagaries of trading, and or it could mean that someone thinks some news–like more on Len Riggio’s interest in buying the retail segment of the business–is on the way.
Our observation about the pricing of Pan Macmillan’s UK ebooks yesterday was apparently of no import at all. While the company started selling via the iBookstore upon its launch in the UK, we’re told they never imposed agency pricing on other ebooksellers.