Courtney Young will join Riverhead in December as executive editor. She has been senior editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and also worked previously at Penguin’s Portfolio, Current, and Sentinel imprints. Jessica Wong will join Nelson Books as senior acquisitions editor on November 24, filling the role previously held by Joel Miller. Lisa Kaufman will step down as marketing director and senior editor of Public Affairs after more than 17 years at the imprint. Her last day is November 28, and publisher Clive Priddle said in the announcement “we are profoundly grateful, and we are fortunate that Lisa will continue to work with some of her […]
Archives for November 2014
“Predicting” the National Book Awards
Last month BookVibe took credit for “predicting” the Booker Prize winner and promised to return with a set of forecasts for the National Book Awards. The company monitors and evaluates Twitter discussions, which is an interesting dataset for certain things, that it can’t possible tell you conclusion five judges together in a room will come to, which is how the NBAs are decided. But maybe you can take it as an indication of where influential online readers are leaning, if they had the vote. In their assessment, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr and Station Eleven by Emily […]
People, Etc.
Rachel Lodi joins Penguin Children’s as associate digital publicist. She was at Palgrave Macmillan. Ronald J. Domanico has joined the board of Books A Million. He recently retired from HD Supply, where he was svp and chief financial officer. Former Bertelsmann ceo Thomas Middelhoff, 61, was found guilty of 27 counts of embezzlement and three counts of tax evasion by a German court. (He was also a director of the NYT Company until earlier this year.) “If his appeal fails, Mr. Middelhoff will be expected to serve two years of the three-year sentence before being released on parole. He might […]
Hachette US Book Sales Were Down 18.5 Percent In the Third Quarter
Third quarter sales at Lagardere Publishing were €564 million, down €16 million from the same period a year ago. (That’s a numerical decline of 2.9 percent, though they company said on a like-for-like basis results were actually down 5.9 percent.) Currency exchange added €6 million. After a surprisingly positive first half, the dispute with Amazon weighed more heavily on HBG USA in the third quarter, with sales down 18.5 percent compared to a year ago. The company cited “the difficult situation with Amazon, as well as the postponement of some publications,” plus a difficult comparison to last year, when “an unusually […]
Amazon and Hachette Finalize New Contract
Hachette Book Group and Amazon announced jointly on Thursday morning that “the companies have reached a new, multi-year agreement for ebook and print sales in the US.” HBG ceo Michael Pietsch said, “This is great news for writers. The new agreement will benefit Hachette authors for years to come. It gives Hachette enormous marketing capability with one of our most important bookselling partners.” Echoing the etailer’s comment on the recent Simon & Schuster contract, Kindle vp David Naggar said in the statement: “We are pleased with this new agreement as it includes specific financial incentives for Hachette to deliver lower prices, which we […]
Corporate: Opening Sales of Over 1 Million for Wimpy Kid, and PRH Launches Audio App
Abrams reports another strong opening week of sales for the latest Jeff Kinney book, DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: THE LONG HAUL. CEO Michael Jacobs says in the release sales “out of the gate have been exceptional and are accelerating briskly. Already more than 1 million copies have sold in the first seven days. He adds, “Our strategy of releasing the new book simultaneously in all the English language territories has shown the global power of Jeff’s books. With eight more countries set to publish The Long Haul before the end of the year, we’re confident that Diary of a […]