At Basic Books, TJ Kelleher has been promoted to vp, associate publisher. Going forward, Ben Platt, Quynh Do, and Helene Barthelemy will report to Kelleher. At Headline, deputy managing director Mari Evans will take over as managing director of March 1, when Jane Morpeth moves up to chair of the group after 7 years as its leader. At Victoria Sanders & Associates, Chris Kepner has been promoted to director of foreign rights. At Sourcebooks, Monika Ebly has been named licensing and strategic partnerships manager (she was program manager at Media Star Promotions; Michelle Dellinger joins the company as managing editor, overseeing editorial production (she […]
Archives for February 2016
People
At Penguin Random House, Benjamin Steinberg has been promoted to associate director, content marketing & partnerships. Paul Stevens has joined Donald Maass Literary Agency as agent. He was previously an editor at Quirk Books and Tor. At Ingram Content Group, Jacqueline Letson has been promoted to vp, human resources. Michael Bell has been named director of national accounts, moving over from Ingram, where he was director of consumer fulfillment. Finally, Emily Weiss has been promoted to director, corporate communications. At David C. Cook, Chriscynethia Floyd has been promoted to vp, marketing and sales for the newly created Learning Resources Strategic […]
Briefs: Hachette Book Group Sues Mottola: Lord of the Rings Coloring Book; and More
Hachette Book Group is suing music executive Tommy Mottola, seeking to recover a $150,000 advance for a memoir they say he never completed. The deal was announced in late 2010 and the manuscript had been due in 2012. The filing is not publicly available yet, but Page Six says “the publisher claims Mottola reneged on finishing the manuscript by April 2012 — even though Hachette offered twice to extend the deadline.” Forthcoming Following the death of author Umberto Eco, Italian publisher La Nave di Teseo (The Ship of Theseus) will release a collection of magazine essays he wrote for Italian weekly […]
John Grisham Publishes “Non-Legal Thriller” on Brain Tumor-Treating Technology for Free
John Grisham’s new project is, as the Washington Post reports, “one of the stranger literary digressions in recent memory.” THE TUMOR, a 49-page “non-legal thriller,” was published for free and centers around a medical device called focused ultrasound. Grisham told the paper the story was “the most important book of his career” because “it has the potential to one day save or prolong millions of lives.” The book grew out of a near-decade-long friendship between Grisham and University of Virginia neurosurgeon Neal Kassell, who founded the Focused Ultrasound Foundation in 2006. Grisham joined the foundation board, and decided that, rather […]
LA Times Book Prize Nominees
The Los Angeles Times announced finalists in 10 categories for their annual book prizes, to be awarded April 9. James Patterson will receive their Innovators Award “for his work to inspire a lifelong love of reading in children and his support of independent bookstores nationwide.” Among the nominees are: Fiction Anne Enright, The Green Road (Norton) James Hannaham, Delicious Foods (Little, Brown) Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles (Random House) Valeria Luiselli, The Story of My Teeth (Coffee House Press) Helen Phillips, Beautiful Bureaucrat (Henry Holt) First Fiction Sarah Gerard, Binary Star (Two Dollar Radio) Ben Metcalf, Against the Country (Random House) […]
People, Etc.
Author and academic Umberto Eco, 84, died February 19 at his home in Milan. Eco was the author of many works of nonfiction and novels, including The Name of the Rose (1983), Foucault’s Pendulum (1988) and most recently Numero Zero, published last November by longtime US publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, who said in a statement: “Umberto Eco was one of the great novelists and scholars of our time. Yet even more than for his timeless works, we will remember him for his exuberance, his vitality, his intense loyalties, and his wonderful company.” Author and National Book Award finalist Rosario Ferré, […]