At Little, Brown, Sarah Murphy has been promoted to associate editor and Amanda Lang has been promoted to associate publicist.
Carolyn Schwartz joins World Book Night US as director of development, replacing Erin Cox, who went to St. Martin’s as senior marketing manager. Schwartz was vp, director of advertising and promotion at the Random House publishing group.
OverDrive has hired Lee Milstein as chief strategy officer, to help expand their digital media businesses into streaming video and education content and services, as well as direct the company’s overall strategy and strategic partnerships.
OverDrive is also opening a New York office for the first time, and Milstein will also lead a market development team based there. He worked previously at YouTube, AOL and DivX.
Sara Golski has joined Chronicle as associate managing editor of the entertainment and art groups.
Lauren Cook has joined Crown as a publicist, working on titles for Harmony. She was a publicist at William Morrow.
In Canada, founder and former CEO of Douglas & McIntyre Scott McIntyre has joined 10-month-old illustrated books publisher Figure 1 — founded by former D&M employees — as strategic adviser. He will help with business strategy and business development, as well as title acquisition.
In the UK, Claudia Webb has joined the family business Palazzo Editions as publishing director. She has been at William Morris Endeavor.
Two weeks ago James Patterson told the WSJ about his plan to give $1 million to support independent bookstores with a children’s section, but the story didn’t get much pick-up. Patterson appeared on CBS This Morning with the same pledge and it received more attention. Interested parties were referred to page at Patterson’s web site which offers no further details for now, but it does provide a form to submit store names.
The Frankfurt Book Fair’s prize for the Best International Literary Adaptation, for a film version of a book, will be presented to Lebanese director Ziad Doueiri (and his co-screenwriter and wife Joëlle Touma) for the adaptation of THE ATTACK by Yasmina Khadra.
Vintage will release a portion of Robert Caro‘s The Passage of Power as a standalone digital short as the world remembers John F. Kennedy. Titled DALLAS, NOVEMBER 22, 1963, the $1.99 ebook publishes October 1.
Finally, in case you weren’t sure, the Twitter account @HMHBooksNews is fake and not associated with the publisher. They are working to have the account taken down.