Suzanne Donahue will leave Simon & Schuster, where she is vp, associate publisher, on December 27. She had held that position for the past two years, and before then was associate publisher at Free Press from 1997 through 2012. S&S publisher Jonathan Karp said in a statement: “In the past two years, I’ve had the privilege and pleasure of working with Suzanne. She has been an excellent colleague and an enthusiastic champion of our books, as well as a source of wisdom on Free Press and Simon & Schuster backlist. Please join me in thanking Suzanne for her many contributions to Simon & Schuster throughout the years, and in wishing her much happiness and success in her future endeavors.”
Meredith Greenhouse will join Perseus as vp, international sales & marketing on January 1, based out of the company’s New York office. Greenhouse was previously senior director of international sales at Harper Collins.
Book Con is working directly with the We Need Diverse Books organization from the start this time around “to shine a light on authors of diverse backgrounds and the need for more diverse characters in today’s books,” and announced that recent National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson will join one of their author panels at the 2015 show. Book Con is planning two panels with WNDB. In addition to Woodson, a children’s literature panel will include Sherman Alexie, Libba Bray, David Levithan and Meg Medina. A sci-fi/fantasy panel discussing the role diversity plays in the genre will feature authors Kameron Hurley, Ken Liu, Nnedi Okorafor, and Daniel Jose Older.
The handwringing in the UK over video blogger Zoella Sugg working with a ghostwriter on her bestselling GIRL ONLINE took another turn when the writer in question, Siobhan Curham, posted about the controversy on her own blog. “For legal reasons I’m not able to talk about the specific details of my involvement with Zoe Sugg’s novel Girl Online,” Curham said, but as she is “receiving messages from complete strangers accusing me of things that are a million miles from the truth… I feel I need to set the record straight as far as I am able to.”
Curham writes she was “hugely impressed that, when given the dream opportunity of a book deal with Penguin, Zoe Sugg chose to create a storyline that dealt with these serious issues – out of a desire to help her fans.” She notes, “when I was offered the opportunity to help Zoe, I also saw the opportunity to help get important and empowering messages across to her incredibly huge fan-base. Messages about self belief, anxiety, sexuality and – oh the irony – online hate.” Curham indicates obliquely she “did have some issues with how the project was managed. Issues which I expressed on more than one occasion….issues which have nothing to do with Zoe.” Ultimately, Curham writes, “mistakes have been made, but I still feel very proud to have worked with Zoe on Girl Online.”
Trafalgar Square Publishing has corrected their bulletin from last week to indicate that International Publishers Marketing will continue to handle distribution for Penguin Books South Africa and Random House Struik (South Africa) in the US.