Peter Garabedian will retire from Macmillan at the end of the year, after joining the company in 2000 as COO. Dan Schwartz has been promoted to the new position of svp, finance and strategy, and “will drive the divisional strategy process, oversee the data science team, and have responsibility for the US finance organization.” Esther Kim is being promoted to the new position of director of business planning, and will work with Schwartz on topics related to analytics, business development and strategy. At HarperCollins, Shawn Nicholls has been promoted to associate publisher for Avon, Impulse, and Witness, as well as for mass market paperbacks, reporting to Lynn […]
Archives for November 2015
Lagardere Gains On Currency As HBG USA Waits for Fourth Quarter
Lagardere reported third quarter sales on Tuesday, with the publishing division growing 2 percent on a like-for-like basis and 7.4 percent overall — thanks to a still surging dollar and strong UK pound — at €607 million, up €43 million from a year ago. Foreign exchange accounted for €32 million of the gain. (Similarly, for the first nine months of the year, foreign exchange accounts for €102 million of the unit’s gains, with €21 million coming from acquisitions, primarily in the UK.) Hachette Book Group USA had another decline, down 4.2 percent in the third quarter, “mainly due to challenging comparison with brisk sales in third quarter […]
New Imprints: HarperOne’s Digital-First HarperLegend; Little, Brown UK’s Fleet
Harper One is launching Harper Legend, a new digital-first line to publish new authors of “visionary and transformational fiction” (paying higher royalties with no advance.) The imprint will handle submissions digitally via Harper Legend’s online system and reviewed by the line’s editorial team. Harper One svp, publisher Mark Tauber said in the announcement: “Call them visionary fiction, spiritual novels, or just stories of change; these are books that not only move us, but transform and illuminate. We have seen the success of this type of fiction as we watch our sales grow and our authors’ influence widen. As we can […]
The Last Day for the Best Price for DBW 16
Just a reminder that our first super-early pricing for the Digital Book World conference — next March 7 – 9 in New York City — expires at the end of the day today. On top of that early pricing, this registration link for Publishers Lunch readers provides an extra discount, giving you the best price available on individual tickets. The early pricing and discount also applies to the return of our one-day Launch Kids event on March 7, as well as the best-value three-day total access pass. (We will be filling out the “day zero” roster for March 7 with a new series of […]
People, Etc.
John Joseph Adams will join Houghton Mifflin Harcourt as editor at large, running the company’s new science fiction & fantasy line under the John Joseph Adams/HMH banner. The first three titles in the line — reissued print versions of Hugh Howey’s SHIFT, DUST, and BEACON 23 — will be published in February simultaneously as hardcovers and trade paperbacks (Howey will continue to publish the ebook editions.) HMH svp, publisher Bruce Nichols said in the announcement: “Science fiction and fantasy have been among the most exciting and creative literary genres in recent years. This fall, we added the first-ever BEST AMERICAN […]
Transformation and Life Among the Giants At DBW
The best super-early pricing for our seventh annual Digital Book World conference — moving from January to early March, still in NYC — expires early next week. We are continuing to clear more speakers and panels for posting, including keynoter Virginia Heffernan, who will look at how the Internet and digital technologies have changed our fundamental relationship with content. Two major themes of the new show will be transformation, and life among the digital giants. While ebook sales levels on their own have found a level for now, the larger digital transformation of our business and the companies within it continues. We’ll […]