At Hachette Livre, Pierre Danet has been promoted to group chief digital innovator, reporting to Arnaud Nourry, while continuing to supervise digital projects in France, reporting to Catherine Cussigh. In addition, Eva Dunoyer moves up to innovation project manager.
At Sourcebooks, Susan Raasch is being promoted to senior accounts receivable specialist, and Sara Bonnar is being promoted to accounting manager.
Due to a US sales restructuring at DK, svp, sales Therese Burke and director of special sales Vicki Korlishin have had their positions eliminated. Burke may be contacted at trez914@gmail.com and Korlishin may be reached at vkorlishin@gmail.com.
Head of Bilheimer & Associates (and head of PR for Book Expo America) Roger Bilheimer is retiring and relocating to North Carolina. He founded his company 20 years ago and wrote in a Facebook post: “I am done, over with an awesome career in the book industry, which I have loved, but it’s now time to move on…. It’s all very, very good and I’m finding lots of good things to do. I’m going fishing tomorrow.”
In the new edition of Poets & Writers, Michael Szczerban interviews four young agents—Claudia Ballard, Seth Fishman, Melissa Flashman, and Alia Hanna Habib—”to talk about what it means to be a literary representative today.”
Obituary
Former publisher and onetime New York Mets co-owner Nelson Doubleday, 81, died Wednesday in Locust Valley, NY from pneumonia. Doubleday was president and chief executive of Doubleday & Company from 1978 to 1985 (when he became chairman) before engineering the company’s sale to Bertelsmann for a reported $500 million in 1986.
Funding
Pronoun, the latest pivoted version of Vook/Byliner/Booklr, announced a $3.5 million investment from Avalon Ventures. Rich Levandov and Brady Bohrmann from Avalon will join Pronoun’s board, along with ceo of TheStreet Elisabeth DeMarse.
Feature Announcement
Smashwords is allowing their authors to list forthcoming titles for preorder at major retailers up to 12 months in advance of publication by supplying basic metadata alone. Previously, the service required a full, complete manuscript and cover art before a title could be listed as a preorder.