Jonathan Stolper will move up to svp and managing director of Nielsen Book as of July 1, as longtime president Jonathan Nowell steps down after 20 years at Nielsen. Nowell will be “helping with the transition through the end of this year,” though he says in the announcement “I feel it’s time to pursue other opportunities.” Stolper joined Nielsen Book in the US in 2010. President of Nielsen Entertainment Howard Applebaum comments: “This is bitter sweet for me. During his 20-year tenure, Jonathan Nowell has built a book business that is critical to the ongoing success of the wider book industry and at Nielsen we are extremely grateful for that. I look forward to the continued growth of the global book business under Jonathan Stolper’s leadership and building on our current success.”
The Booker Prize Foundation has appointed Gaby Wood as literary director, succeeding Ion Trewin, who died earlier this month. Wood has been head of books at the Daily Telegraph for the past five years and will leave her position at the end of June, though she will continue to write for the paper. Booker Prize Foundation chair Jonathan Taylor said in the announcement: “This is an exciting appointment. Gaby will bring new perspectives while maintaining our mission to bring the best of contemporary literary fiction to an ever widening international audience. Ion was aware of our intentions and shared our great enthusiasm at the prospect that Gaby would succeed him.”
Random House has hired Melanie DeNardo as associate director of publicity. Previously she worked for Little, Brown Children’s, Holt, and Crown. Greg Kubie has been promoted to senior manager, after 5 years with the Ballantine Bantam Dell publicity department. Alex Coumbis has been promoted to associate publicist, continuing to work with the Del Rey team across campaigns, and Stasia Whalen has been promoted to associate with the Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau.
Brant Janeway has moved over from Macmillan Audio to St. Martin’s as vp, marketing, communications & audience development. He will lead SMP’s Red Team which focuses on commercial women’s fiction, YA, romance, cooking & crafts, health/diet/fitness, parenting and other categories.
Mollie Thomas has been promoted to assistant editor at Rodale Books, continuing to assist with illustrated cookbooks and spirituality & mindfulness titles, as well as editing her own titles.
Janice Audet has joined Harvard University Press as executive editor for life sciences. Most recently she was publisher, fundamental life sciences, at Academic Press/Elsevier.
Awards
Among the Edgar Award winners announced Wednesday night:
Best Novel: Mr. Mercedes, by Stephen King (Scribner)
Best First Novel: Dry Bones in the Valley, by Tom Bouman (Norton)
Best Paperback Original: The Secret History of Las Vegas, by Chris Abani (Penguin)
Best Fact Crime: Tinseltown, by William J. Mann (Harper)
In the UK, Marion Coutts‘ memoir The Iceberg won the Wellcome Prize. Grove/Atlantic will publish in the US in January 2016.
Partnerships
St. Martin’s announced a publishing relationship with Force12 Media and their Special Ops website SOFREP.com to publish military and special operations-themed books. Overseen by Marc Resnick at SMP and Jack Murphy at SOFREP, they expect to publish “several titles a year,” starting in 2016.
Wondering
What if publishing people put just a fraction of the concern over whether PEN should give an award to Charlie Hebdo into questions about broad industry connections to Author Solutions?