Brett Collins has joined Open Road Media as svp, product development. Previously he was founder and digital strategist at Counterspace. Michael Gedonius has joined as vp, integrated national sales. Previously he was an account manager at Playboy Enterprises. Finally, Julie Blattberg has been promoted to vp, strategic operations.
Jon M. Sweeney will join Ave Maria Press in late June as executive editor. Most recently, he was editorial director at Franciscan Media, and publisher of Paraclete Press.
Sanj Kharbanda has left his position as senior vice president, digital markets at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Awards
James Hannaham won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for Delicious Foods.
Meg Rosoff won the 2016 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (worth roughly $600,000).
The IACP presented their cookbook awards (in over 15 categories), including honoring J. Kenji Lòpez-Alt’s The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science as best American cookbook, and Marnie Hanel, Andrea Slonecker & Jen Stevenson’s The Picnic: Recipes and Inspiration from Basket to Blanket in the General cookbook category.
The Bologna Book Fair honored publishers on six continents as publishers of the year, including Canada’s Groundwood Books (North America) and the UK’s Andersen Press.
The National Book Awards are accepting publisher entries from now through May 16.
Bookselling
In the vein of Powell’s longstanding and successful Indiespensable subscription program, The Strand has launched book subscription plans of their own, called The Book Hookup.
Book Fairs
Two staples of book fairs are trade magazine articles declaring a “positive mood” (the negative people don’t spend money to go sell) and press releases from competing book fairs. So with the Bologna Book Fair underway and the London Book Fair next, the Frankfurt Book Fair has decided it’s time to announce a new initiative for October.
Seeking to accommodate the longstanding habit of agents who begin selling rights from hotel lobbies on Tuesday (or even Monday) before the official FBF opening on Wednesday, the official Literary Agents Center on the fairgrounds will be open for business — and a new Publishers’ Rights Corner is available for booking, also open on Tuesday, located right next to the agents center. Publishers with regular stands can book a table with four chairs at the Rights Corner for Tuesday by contacting Tuesday@book-fair.com. Director of the centers Riky Stock says in the press release, “Many agents will begin holding their meetings in the LitAg on Tuesday this year, instead of in the adjacent hotels. In consideration of this development, we wanted to offer publishers, editors, and rights departments the opportunity to conduct their meetings on the fairgrounds on the Tuesday as well. Editors will have free access to the fairgrounds on the Tuesday.”