At Folio Literary management, both Emily van Beek and Steve Troha have been made partners, joining Claudia Cross, Scott Hoffman and Jeff Kleinman.
At Workman, Traci Todd will join as director of children’s publishing, and Sara Corbett will become the new art director of children’s publishing, both starting January 29. Todd was most recently editorial director of Appleseed and Abrams’ children’s licensed publishing. Corbett was most recently associate art director for Penguin Workshop. They take over following the great and terrible departure of Daniel Nayeri, Nathalie Le Du, and Colleen AF Venable in October to start a new imprint at Macmillan Children’s.
At Sourcebooks, Valerie Pierce has been promoted to senior marketing manager.
Hachette UK head of digital George Walkley was promoted to the new, broader role of digital and development director, reporting to deputy ceo Richard Kitson. He will “oversee digital supply chain, drive digital initiatives on behalf of the group and provide support, infrastructure, advice and expertise to allow publishers to publish digital content effectively.”
The Milo Chronicles
A modest update, that’s about the little details rather than big case developments. The court has published a transcript from a December conference among attorneys for Milo Yiannopoulos and Simon & Schuster, and Judge Barry Ostrager.
In one point, Judge Ostrager resists the plaintiff’s effort for extensive discovery across the personal cellphones of 20 or more Simon & Schuster employees unless they pay for it. S&S has a “bring your own device environment” rather than issuing company phones, which means they do not control or have access to work-related texts and other communications on those devices. (Just as people learned from the Apple case to not email anything you wouldn’t want to see exposed in court documents, the same is true now for text messages.)
The more minor detail, in which the judge also limits the plaintiff’s ability to demand wide discovery of communications among a broad set of senior CBS executives, is Yiannopoulos’s contention that “CBS people at the highest level of CBS were involved and consulted and participated in the termination of my client’s publishing contract.” (That includes ceo Leslie Moonves, and svp of communications Gil Schwartz. The publisher’s attorney says, “The decision to terminate this contract was made by the chief executive of Simon & Schuster. Understandably, this was a huge thing at the time and she was reporting up to others and there were communications with CBS as you would in any corporation where you have a duty to report up. All those communications, whether to or from, have been produced.”