Lynn Coady‘s story collection Hell Going won the Giller prize on Tuesday night. Published in Canada by House of Anansi, it was the one book in contention that did not already have an announced US publisher. She was shortlisted in 2011 for THE ANTAGONIST, published in early 2012 by Knopf. Coady’s US agent Christy Fletcher told us that they “have serious interest and expect to close soon” on US rights for HELL GOING.
Michael Signorelli will join Holt as senior editor on November. He has been at Harper Collins for over 8 years. At Holt he will focus on crime fiction, while continuing to pursue a broad range of nonfiction.
Sabila Khan has been promoted to director of subsidiary rights for Dutton, Gotham, Blue Rider, Viking Studio, Hudson Street Press, Penguin and Plume Originals.
Sean McCarthy has left Sheldon Fogelman Agency to start his own agency, Sean McCarthy Literary Agency. Sean can be reached at sean@mccarthylit.com.
Senior advisor at Providence Equity Partners Brian Napack has joined the board of directors for Isolation Network, which is the parent company of ebook distributor INscribe Digital and digital music distributor INgrooves. Napack says in the announcement, “Robb [McDaniels] and his team at Isolation Network are doing a great job solving the increasingly complex distribution problems faced by the content industries. With INgrooves for music, and now with INscribe for books, they are leveraging their world-class platform to turn digital distribution from a problem to a competitive advantage.” Napack currently also serves on the boards of Ascend Learning, Blackboard, Education Management Corp. and Zero-to-Three.
Ingram Publisher Services has added Arcas Publishing, Cardinal, The Do Book Company, Le French Book, Post Hill Press, Spring House Press, and Third World Press as clients.
Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s Samuel Johnson prize winner The Pike was published in the US as GABRIELE D’ANNUNZIO: Poet, Seducer, and Preacher of War.
Penguin Random House US announced internally “the first steps in the gradual integration of the company’s Credit and Customer Service departments,” an evolutionary process that will consolidate Penguin Group’s separate credit and customer service functions into the company’s Westminster, MD facility. By the end of that process, functions outsourced by Pearson to India will be relinquished and they will “bring both of these activities for the combined Penguin Random House entirely back to the US.”
In the short term, by the end of the first quarter of 2014 Pearson will relinquish their transition services related to credit for Penguin, and an outsourcing arrangement with IBM that had some of that work done in India will terminate. But the company underscores that Penguin’s existing, separate credit system will be maintained separately throughout next year, with the aim of going live with a consolidated Penguin Random House system in early 2015. (Similarly, the Random House credit system will continue to operate as is until that planned merging in 2015.)
A unified companywide customer service team is expected to be ready at the same time. At that point, in 2015, Penguin’s customer service operation in Old Tappan, NJ “will be discontinued” and a separate services arrangement with IBM will end. The company’s “goal [is] to transition as many of our Old Tappan colleagues to Westminster as possible as we work to expand the team there.”
Spokesperson Stuart Applebaum declined to indicate the current staffing count at Old Tappan but noted “as said in the memo, we sincerely hope that as many of our Old Tappan colleagues as possible will continue as members of the expanded team come 2015.” He added, “As we are just in first days for the Customer Service transition evolution it is way premature for speculation about specific relocations.”
Separately, at Penguin Random House UK, Random group finance director Mark Gardiner becomes chief financial director of Penguin Random House UK, reporting to Ian Hudson. Random’s Graham Buckel takes an expanded role as well, and Penguin UK finance director Suzi Brennan has elected to leave after six months.