Scholastic has announced a number of new hires and promotions. David Ascher has been promoted to svp, finance and strategic initiatives, while JoAnne Mojica will be vp, publishing operations, Scholastic Trade. Anamika Bhatnagar has been promoted to associate publisher of Pilkey Publishing and Scholastic Inc., and Sheila Marie Everett moves up to publicity director. Rick DeMonico has been promoted to senior art director and Elizabeth Herzog has been promoted to art director, Nonfiction and Branches. Finally, Elizabeth Schaefer has joined Scholastic as editor, licensed publishing. She was most recently an associate editor at Disney Book Group.
At Vintage/Anchor, Angie Venezia has been promoted to publicity manager.
Samantha Metzger has joined Simon & Schuster Children’s as subsidiary rights manager. Previously she worked in subsidiary rights for Macmillan Children’s.
Crown announced a number of promotions in its marketing team for the Crown, Broadway, Hogarth, and Tim Duggan Books imprints. Sarah Pekdemir has been promoted to assistant director; Kayleigh George moves up to senior marketing manager; and Danielle Crabtree is promoted to marketing manager.
Announcements
The ABA announced that registration for next January’s Winter Institute 11, to be held in Denver, will open on September 9. This time, the ABA “will grow the 2016 registration limit to a small degree beyond the usual 500-bookseller maximum.”
Summer Reading
The White House announced President Obama’s summer vacation reading list. As USA Today reminded us, the Lahiri and Salter novels were part of his 2013 Christmas book shopping spree:
All The Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr
The Lowland, by Jhumpa Lahiri
All That Is, by James Salter
Washington: A Life, by Ron Chernow
Between The World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Sixth Extinction, by Elizabeth Kolbert
Narrating
It was announced that British actor David Oyelowo is narrating HarperCollins’ audiobook version of the forthcoming authorized James Bond novel Trigor Mortis, written by Anthony Horowitz. USA Today notes the news “sent the black Bond movement into a frenzy” (there have been rumors for some time about the possibility of Idris Elba taking on the Bond role on screen). It also spawned a wave of stories mischaracterizing Oyelowo as the first black person to voice Bond; Hugh Quarshie narrated a Dr. No audiobook released in 2012.