Rachel Vogel has joined Dunow, Carlson & Lerner as agent. She was most recently agent at Waxman Leavell Literary Agency.
Jennifer Chen Tran has joined the Bradford Literary Agency as agent. She was previously associate agent at Fuse Literary.
Ginny Smith Younce has been promoted to executive editor at Penguin Press.
Jessie Kindig has joined Verso Books as an editor, acquiring trade and academic crossover titles across a wide range, including US history and politics. She was formerly an associate agent at Roam Agency.
Shane Danaher has joined Rodale Books as associate web producer, and Maureen Cirnitski has joined as project editor.
At their annual meeting in New York, the BISG presented a variety of awards, including a Lifetime Service Award to longtime BISG board member Sally Dedecker at Sally Dedecker Enterprises in recognition of her “tireless and persistent efforts.” Former BISG chair Dominique Raccah said in the presentation, “As we continue to reinvent BISG, there’s no better example of what our core values mean in practice than Sally Dedecker. For more than half of the time that BISG has been serving the industry, Sally has been serving BISG.”
Other recipients included Angela Bole (IPBA) and Dave Cramer (HBG), both receiving the Industry Champion Award, with SheWrites Press winning their Industry Innovator Award. The membership also ratified the proposed governance and by-laws changes.
Acquisitions
RBmedia (FKA Recorded Books) continues to expand with the acquisition of Gildan Media, a publisher of audiobooks for business, personal development, training, and education with a catalog of 2,200 titles. Chief content officer for RBmedia Troy Juliar, notes: “For the last decade, Gildan Media has dominated the business audiobook sector.”
Gildan’s audiobooks and ebooks have been distributed by Hachette Book Group, and they added a new line of books under the Gildan Press banner earlier this year. Distribution with HBG runs through the end of the year. On the book line, the company tells us they “will be evaluating the extent to which we want to be in that business going forward.”
Legal
Right on schedule, Simon & Schuster filed one more reiteration of their case to dismiss Milo Yiannopoulos‘s lawsuit for breach of contract, and the matter can finally move on to oral arguments in October. The publisher reiterates their key point: “It is undisputed that Yiannopoulos did not protest until July 11, 2017 letter, however — five months after accepting the payment. This is simply insufficient to reserve any rights as a matter law.”