At Scribe in the UK: Molly Slight has been promoted to editorial and publicity manager, while Adam Howard moves up to publicist. Sophie Leeds has been promoted to digital marketing coordinator, and Sarah Braybrooke becomes managing director. Matt Klise has been promoted to assistant editor at Penguin Books. Laura Van der Veer has joined Amazon Publishing’s Little A as editor. Previously, she was associate editor at Spiegel & Grau. Hannah Wood has left Harper and is relocating to San Francisco to work as a freelance editor. Robert James Waller, 77, bestselling author of The Bridges of Madison County, died on March 10, at home […]
Archives for March 2017
London Announcements from Storytel, Faber, and More
Sweden’s acquisitive Storytel purchased People’s Press in Denmark, which publishes about 100 titles a year, as of March 1. They paid approximately $10.7 million. People’s Press had 2016 sales of about $14.5 million, and has a backlist of approximately 1,200 titles. Storytel acquired audiobook publisher Kontentan earlier this year, following last year’s purchases of Norstedts and Mobifo. The publisher now operates in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Poland, and their digital service has approximately 340,000 paid subscribers. They will combine their Copenhagen office with People’s Press. Announced now but underway for some time, Georgina Capel Associates has paired with former ITV executive […]
Rabe Reaffirms Plan to Buy Part of Penguin’s Stake, and Bring In Financial Partner
Bertelsmann chief executive Thomas Rabe reiterated in an interview with Germany’s Der Spiegel the plan for Bertelsmann to buy only part of Pearson’s 47 percent stake in Penguin Random House, while looking to a financial partner to buy out the remainder. “I expect we will raise our stake to 70 or 75 percent as long as the conditions are right,” Rabe said again. In the January investor call when Pearson first announced its intention to issue an exit notice for the joint venture, cfo Coram Williams said in the q&a session that it was “up to Bertelsmann whether they acccept that notice. If […]
Moderate Dealmaking Ahead of the London Book Fair
It’s an unusual dealmaking climate leading into this year’s London Book Fair, which officially begins next Tuesday, for a variety of reasons. Shifting the gathering back a month to mid-March for the first time in years has various effects. The submissions process appears to have made a late adjustment to the early show and, as we have already noted, with big publishers just coming out of sales conference, new announcements for big fall titles (in the last week alone including Mandela, Allende, Gordon Brown, Dan Rather, the Bush sisters, Jennifer Egan, Tina Brown, and John Le Carre) are getting as much […]
People: Parlsey to Dutton As EIC
John Parsley has been named vp, editor-in-chief of Dutton, filling part of the role vacated when Ben Sevier departed to become publisher of Grand Central. It’s a nearly even trade between companies, as Parsely was vp, executive editor at Little, Brown. Putnam/Berkley/Dutton president Ivan Held said in the announcement: “John’s own list, along with his ability to further empower the great editorial team that is in place at Dutton, signal continued high-level, distinctive, and focused publishing from this imprint.” Also at Dutton, executive editor Brent Howard will move over from Berkley, bringing the Caliber military-history list with him, reporting to Parsley. Natasha Simons […]
Strout Leads April Library Reads List
Elizabeth Strout’s novel Anything Is Possible tops the April Library Reads list. The list also includes Omar El Akkad’s American War, an excerpt of which you can start reading now in both our big Buzz Books 2017: Spring/Summer, and our slimmer just-released April Buzz Books Monthly. The rest of the list features: Beartown, by Fredrik Backman Waking Gods, by Sylvain Neuvel Miss You, by Kate Eberlen The Stars Are Fire, by Anita Shreve Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann The Shadow Land, by Elizabeth Kostova A Twist In Time, by Julie McElwain Gone Without a Trace, by Mary Torjussen