Liz Esman has joined Crown as senior publicist, Crown, Hogarth, Broadway Books and Tim Duggan Books. Previously she was a publicist at HarperCollins. In addition, Morgan Carattini has been promoted to publishing manager for Crown, Archetype, Hogarth, Broadway Books, Tim Duggan Books, and Three Rivers Press. The Ransom Center at the University of Texas-Austin has acquired Kazuo Ishiguro‘s archive for a reported $1.1 million. Among the unpublished works included in the archive are an early pulp western, as well as a short novel called To Remember a Summer By. Entertainment Weekly has an excerpt of THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S […]
Archives for August 2015
Next, Scribd Curtails Unlimited Audiobooks
Following substantial reductions in their catalog of romance titles at the end of June, Scribd announced in a blog post last Friday a substantial curtailment of the distinctive unlimited audiobooks included in their monthly subscription offering. As of September 20, subscribers will be limited to a single audiobook per month from one part of the collection. To listen to a second audiobook within the same subscription month, members will have to pay the equivalent of another month’s fee — positioned as purchasing an “audio credit” for $8.99. At the same time, Scribd says they will keep some kind of catalog […]
Books-A-Million Proxy Shows Andersons Rejected A Higher Outside Bid
Books-a-Million has filed a preliminary proxy statement with the SEC in advance of a special shareholders’ meeting to vote on the Anderson family’s offer to buy out the stock they do not own for $3.25 a share (valuing the entire company at $50 million). A date for the meeting has not been set yet. The filing provides the first comprehensive and honest look at a company that has been in play at least since 2011 and also explains why there have been just a few potential buyers over the years. (Something like 40 percent of the company’s value is attributed to […]
People
Gene Taft will join Johns Hopkins University Press as publicity manager for the Books division on September 1, succeeding Kathy Alexander, who will retire October 2. Taft was formerly vp, assistant publisher at PublicAffairs and spent the past decade running his own publicity firm, Gene Taft PR. At Scribner, Kyle Radler has been promoted to publicist. Obituary Author, former book publishing executive, and co-founder of Common Sense Media Liz Perle, 59, died on Thursday following a lengthy battle with breast cancer. During her book publishing career, Perle had been publisher at William Morrow/Avon, Addison-Wesley and Prentice Hall Press, and she […]
People, Etc.
At the Andrea Brown Literary Agency, Jennifer Rofe has been promoted to senior agent. Marissa Litak has joined Sourcebooks as an assistant publicist. Previously, she was editorial assistant at Rhetoric Society Quarterly. The new issue of Poets & Writers magazine has Michael Szczerban interviewing at length 37 Ink founder Dawn Davis: “The truth is, we spend so much of our time advocating internally for our books, making sure we have the right cover, the right subtitle, filling out forms and so forth, that we often don’t have time to be entrepreneurial. But when a moment of clarity comes, it’s fun to pursue […]
New Leadership for Harper India
CEO of Harper India P.M. Sukumar “has decided to leave the company to pursue other interests,” the parent company announced. “A replacement will be named in the coming weeks” they said, and “Sukumar will be involved in the transition of the business.” In other transitions, Harper India will report to Harper UK ceo Charlie Redmayne going forward. HarperCollins ceo Brian Murray says in the statement, “Sukumar has contributed substantially to HarperCollins India, leading a dynamic trade business over the last several years and adding the increasingly important Collins Education publishing program in 2013. We are grateful for his contributions and wish him well in his future endeavors.” Sukumar […]