Christopher Richards will join Penguin Press on January 11 as associate editor. Previously he was an associate editor at FSG.
At Penguin Random House, Andrew Rein is promoted to sales director, mass merchandise national accounts.
Bloomsbury has agreed to acquire some family law publishing properties from Nexis Lexis and Jordan Publishing that are being spun off as a condition for regulatory approval of RELX (Reed Elsevier)’s purchase of Jordan. Bloomsbury is paying £1.4m minus deferred income. At the same time, Bloomsbury says trading conditions have been “good…in broad terms” but sales for the year remain dependent on final holiday results. We will begin to have visibility of post-Christmas returns and post-Christmas ebook sales over the next 12 weeks. The results for the financial year ending 29/2/16 will be dependent on these and the completion of deals under negotiation, as in previous years.
In a separate announcement, anticipated in Bloomsbury’s release but not stated explicitly, the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development announces the end of their seven-year partnership with Bloomsbury. The foundation is launching its own publishing house, Hamad bin Khalifa University Press, publishing children’s books, fiction, academic, and education titles in both English and Arabic. Bloomsbury notes, “We are now handing over to the strong local team we developed having completed this mission, who will continue to publish on the foundations established. QF now has the tools, knowledge and experience to take the reins and fully run its publishing house.”
In other corporate news, Amazon has been showing off their new 50,000-square-foot warehouse built inside of a Manhattan office building on W. 34 Street to the media. The company has been making supply chain news a lot this month, with disclosures that they are negotiating to lease 20 Boeing jets to handle their air cargo and purchased thousands of trailers for Amazon-branded freight shipping across the country.
Some modifications to Monday’s “Absolutely Best of the Best Books of 2015” roundup: Elena Ferrante is edited in the US and UK by Michael Reynolds, while Robin Desser edited M Train by Patti Smith, and Farley Chase sold Jill Leovy’s book when he was at the Waxman Literary Agency.