At Bloomsbury, Rachel Mannheimer has been promoted to editor, and Melanie Sankel has gone from associate director of sales for Fairchild Books to director, adoption sales at Bloomsbury Academic.
After Skyhorse and Start Publishing’s intended joint acquisition of Night Shade Books’ assets ignited public controversy over the original terms of sale (and now, after a revision, the sale “is in a holding pattern right now waiting for all the authors’ feedback”, a Skyhorse spokesperson told us) the two publishers have bought a different science fiction & fantasy publisher, Underland Press, for an undisclosed sum. The deal for the six-year-old press, according to a joint release, is part of Skyhorse and Start Publishing’s plans “to deepen their relationship to the genre community.”
Skyhorse publisher Tony Lyons said in a statement: “We are thrilled at the acquisition of Underland. We look forward to publishing 10–20 new books a year, to re-promoting the Underland backlist, and to finding new readers for these terrific books.” Underland founder Victoria Blake will continue to act as publisher of InFact Books, an imprint of the Creative Nonfiction Foundation.
Originally intended for inclusion in his bestselling TENTH OF DECEMBER collection, George Saunders‘ story “Fox 8” was removed as “asking one stretch too many from the reader.” Now Random House has released it as a digital short. “My editor said to me, ‘Would you like to revisit that story as a stand-alone release?’ I didn’t even know you could do that.”
O’Reilly will distribute many of Elsevier’s academic, research-focused titles in ebook form, including DRM-free versions through the Oreilly.com store. Including such areas as computer security and networking, the agreement covers over 1,200 titles from Elsevier imprints including Morgan Kaufmann, Syngress, Academic Press, Butterworth-Heinemann, and Newnes.