At St. Martin’s, John Murphy will take the new role of vp, publishing strategy. “He will be involved in author relations, list developments, and in seeking new publishing opportunities and concepts as well as identifying trends in publishing and the media at large.” Most recently divisional vp, director of publicity, Murphy has been at St. Martin’s for over 25 years.
Former Penguin Group advising director of corporate communications (and longtime S&S director of publicity before that) Tracey Guest will take over as vp, director of publicity for all of the St. Martin’s Press imprint on June 2. She will report to evp, marketing and digital media strategy Jeff Dodes.
At Simon & Schuster Children’s, Nicole Ellul has been promoted to assistant editor at Simon Pulse, while Christina Solazzo moves up to senior production editor for the Simon Spotlight and Little Simon imprints.
Senior director of publicity for William Morrow Ben Bruton has left the company after more than 10 years to explore new employment opportunities.
Waterstones head of PR and brand communications Fiona Allen and PR/brand communications manager Jon Howells have both left the company after more than 8 years, The Bookseller reports. Allen and Howells can be contacted via email on fiona.braddock@gmail.com and jmhowells@hotmail.com.
Also in the UK, Hodder & Stoughton editor Anne Perry has been given the Kim Scott Walwyn Prize, honoring emerging talent among women in publishing. The judges “marveled at the speed, imagination and determination with which she has championed genre fiction in this country. Anne not only publishes excellent science fiction and fantasy, she also writes it brilliantly…. She is the acme of today’s multi-talented and multi-tasking publisher – a fearless pathfinder who has set a standard to which we should all aspire.”