In the UK, Parragon has promoted Wendy Friedman to president, creative, responsible for setting the top level creative direction for all of Parragon’s product output across its Books and Kit & Gift divisions. Darren Witherall moves up to president, EMEA, responsible for all of Parragon’s businesses in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, India and Germany. Finally, Kim Brown has joined as president, North America. Previously she was svp, merchandise at Baker & Taylor. All promotions are effective May 1.
Target‘s Book Club pick for May is The Secret Life of Violet Grant by Beatriz Williams.
Forthcoming
J.K. Rowling‘s next novel as Robert Galbraith, CAREER OF EVIL, will be published by Little, Brown in the US and UK this fall. The publisher promises “more details to come soon, including pub date.”
Sue Grafton‘s next book, due for release on August 25, is titled “X“. As in, “just plain X”, USA Today reports. Grafton tells the paper: “I first thought of using ‘X is for Xenophobe’ or Xenophobia, which suggests a fear of foreigners, but alas, not one single foreigner materialized in the course of the writing. There’s a box of files with an X on the lid, a Father Xavier, a married couple whose last name is Xanakis, and a missing painting of a xebec which is a three-masted sailing vessel, but none of these seemed to encompass the whole. Finally, it occurred to me that since I was the one who invented this ‘rule’ about ‘…is for…’ I was surely entitled to break it.”
Initiative
Books-A-Million has been informally printing books for self-publishing customers since 2013 through the two Espresso Book Machines they installed in BAM stores (one in Maine and one in Alabama). Now the company has formally launched an online self-publishing portal/platform, BAM! Publishing, designed to charge would-be authors for a variety of “packages.”
Ink, Bits & Pixels reports that Fast Pencil is the service provider for the new offering, since “a FastPencil email account is listed as the contact email address to get a quote for certain services.” (Fast Pencil is now owned by RR Donnelly, as a result of their acquisition of Courier earlier in the year.)