Clay Farr will join Basic Books as vp, associate publisher & marketing director later this month. He spent the past nine years at Perseus, most recently as vp, group marketing, and also served on Basic’s editorial board.
At Crown, Rachel Meier has been named managing editor for the Crown trade, Broadway Books, and Hogarth imprints. Previously she was marketing manager for Crown Trade.
Summer Smith has joined Bloomsbury as associate director of publicity. Previously she was publicity manager at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Emily van Beek has been promoted senior vice president at Folio Jr., the children’s division of Folio Literary Management.
A significant crowd gathered at Columbia University on Tuesday afternoon to remember and pay tribute to the late publisher Peter Workman. Speakers included family and selected friends and employees, as well as Len Riggio, Barnes & Noble chairman. Riggio called Workman, “One of the brightest stars and greatest minds in the history of publishing.” He noted, “Our buyers were awestruck every time he visited.” In appreciated moments of candor, Riggio noted words employees associated with Workman included “persistent, insistent, excitable, relentless and what one buyer called ‘an excessive pain in the butt who wouldn’t take yes for an answer.'” Riggio hailed Workman as “a bookmaker much more so than just a publisher” who “looked at books through the eyes of consumers” long before that idea took root elsewhere. “I’ve never met his peer in all my years in bookselling, and we are unlikely to meet his like again.”