Jenny Todd has been appointed publisher and managing director at Canongate, with longtime publisher Jaime Byng moving up to chief executive, which will allow him a “greater focus on developing new businesses”. Of Todd, promoted from associate publisher, Byng said in a statement: [She] has played an instrumental role in the growth and development of Canongate. She brings to the role considerable skill and experience.” With respect to the restructure, Byng added: “Not only do I believe that the new structure will make us more efficient as an organisation but it will harness more fully the creativity of the team and the many exceptional writers we work with. It will also enable us to make the most of the increasing number of opportunities out there.”
At Putnam, Sofie Brooks has been promoted to assistant editor.
At Pyr, Rene Sears has been promoted to editorial director.
Awards
Rowman & Littlefield and National Book Network president and ceo Jed Lyons has received the Jean Srnecz Lifetime Achievement Award, given by Baker & Taylor in celebration of R&N/NBN’s forty year anniversary as an independent publisher and leading book distributor. The award was presented following a dinner for 500 attendees during the Baker & Taylor Vendor Summit in Charleston, SC on March 16.
In The News
The publication of Michael Shnayerson’s unauthorized biography of Governor Andrew Cuomo, THE CONTENDER, on March 31 comes with some complications – most notably, the WSJ reports, Cuomo’s efforts to convince Shnayerson to “ditch the unauthorized biography and instead work with him on a book about governing.” Over meetings and conversations with Shnayerson and his agent, Esther Newberg (whom Cuomo called on a “Saturday at her Sag Harbor beach house and Sunday on her cellphone”) Cuomo made his pitch, with the caveat that the governor “would sit down with the author as long as his biography came out after the governor’s.” (Cuomo’s official biography, published by HarperCollins last October, sold poorly, likely because Cuomo refused to promote it during the election campaign.) bookShnayerson declined. “Thank God I didn’t do that.” Shnayerson told the paper. “I think it would have been a hellish experience.”