Benjamin Steinberg will join Dey Street Books in the newly created role of associate publisher. Previously, he was director of partnerships and imprint consumer marketing for Knopf Doubleday.
Gayley Avery has joined Bonnier Publishing USA as director of marketing and publicity for Little Bee Books and Weldon Owen. Previously, she was marketing director for Scholastic.
The NYT looks at “qualms and questions” over the release of Curtis Dawkins‘ debut collection The Graybar Hotel from Scribner this week. An MFA grad of Western Michigan University, Dawkins is serving a life sentence without parole for murder. (His
low-six-figure advance goes into an education fund for his children.)
Director of marketing and communications for Nielsen Book in the UK Mo Siewcharran died June 27 after becoming ill while traveling in Greece.
British crime writer, Helen Cadbury, 52, died of cancer. Her first novel, To Catch a Rabbit, was published in 2013.
Bookselling
Maple Street Book Shop in New Orleans, which planned to close in June, will remain open until July 29, due to a surge in business. Owner Gladin Scott said, “As soon as I announced the closing, business doubled.”
Tampa’s Inkwood Books is planning a move to new space in Tampa Heights after 26 years in their current location. Owner Stefani Beddingfield will hold events in the new space starting in September and expects to be fully open by mid-January, and will operate the current location through Christmas. The new location will “almost double Inkwood’s bookselling space, to about 2,300 square feet.” Former owners of the store Carla Jimenez and Leslie Reiner also own the store’s current building, which is on the market for sale.
In Denver, after a two year transition, Len Vlahos and Kristen Gilligan officially became controlling owners of the Tattered Cover. “The transition has been so good and so fluid that it’s a little anticlimactic,” Vlahos told the Denver Post. “But this is what we’ve been working toward. This is why we came here. We’re excited.” Gilligan added, “It’s turned out even better (than expected) — it is incredible. I am more passionate and enthusiastic than I was before, and I’m an enthusiastic, passionate person by nature.” The newspaper also interviews retiring Joyce Meskis. Asked what she hope does not change at the store, she replies, “The commitment to customer service and the freedom to read.”
Forthcoming
Hillary Mantel said the final installment in the Wolf Hall series, The Mirror and the Light, may be delayed until 2019, calling the planned summer 2018 release date “increasingly unlikely.”
Digital
Jellybooks will close their book discovery platform on August 31, to “focus all our resources on growing and expanding our reader analytics platform.”