• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Login
  • Register

Publishers Lunch

The Publishing Industry's Daily Essential Read

  • Publishers Marketplace
  • Site Guide
  • Help

People, Etc.

June 1, 2018
By Michael Cader

By multiple second-hand accounts from publishers who do business with Disney, evp of Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media’s (DCPI) Publishing and Digital Media business unit Andrew Sugerman has left the company. He had oversight for “all global licensed and vertical publishing across books, e-books, mobile apps, magazines, and comics under Disney Publishing Worldwide and Disney Book Group” and worked at Disney since 2007. The company has not issued an official announcement about new leadership for the group but is expected to do so after Book Expo (where reportedly, the new executives are in attendance today). Update: That public announcement was never made, but Tonya Agurto was promoted following Sugerman’s departure and her portfolio includes serving as Disney Publishing Worldwide senior vice president and global publisher.

Stephanie Smith was promoted to associate publisher at Zondervan, and Andy Rogers has joined the company as acquisitions editor for their nonfiction division. He fills the role held by now-retired executive editor John Sloan. Rogers was an acquisitions editor at Our Daily Bread.

Katie Boland has joined Catapult/Counterpoint Press/Soft Skull as events coordinator.

Owner of bookseller Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza Susan Novotny and her son Alexander Novotny have formed the Novotny Literary Agency. They want to “bridge the relationship between promising authors, successful publishers, knowledgeable and inspired booksellers and, most especially, readers.”

Bonnier Publishing group chief operating officer Sharon Parker has decided to leave her position on October 1, after 20 years with the company.

The NYT has posted an obituary for literary agent Elaine Markson. They quote her as having said, “If you took a poll among your friends, I doubt that any of them would know a literary agent or want to be one. And yet it is a most wonderful profession: Next to his dog, you are the writer’s best friend.”

Awards
The Audio Publishers Association presented their 30 Audie Awards on Thursday night, with the large-cast production of George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo named audiobook of the year.

Follow Up
Consultant Thad McIlroy challenges Len Riggio’s contention that the average price of a paperback book has become out of reach on a relative basis over time, now costing “two and half times the minimum wage,” compared to “one half the minimum wage when [he] got started.” (That would be $18.12 — perhaps in range for trade paperbacks, but not close for mass market paperbacks.)

The underlying problem is the lack of adjustment over time to the minimum wage — now a major political issue — rather than the cost of books. “The real minimum wage (in current dollars) is at levels last seen in the 1950s,” as McIlroy shows from the data. On a relative (inflation adjusted) basis, “book prices are lower today than they were twenty years ago, not higher.” He cites Federal Reserve data showing “book prices are 2.5 percent lower today than they were [in 1998], 4 percent lower than at their peak in the late 2000s.” He adds, “recreational books kept getting cheaper in relation to many other things that we purchase.”

At the same time, McIlroy underscores that “by published [online at Glassdoor] accounts, the minimum wage is where you start when you accept a job at Barnes & Noble.”

Filed Under: Free, Uncategorized

sidebar

Primary Free Sidebar

Login


Forgot password
Quick Pass users click here to log in
Get Full Access
The publishing industry's essential daily read

Each Publishers Lunch Deluxe subscription includes full access to our searchable multi-year archive of industry news, a nightly email reporting 10 to 50 deal transactions, and our database of industry contacts, scripts, and posting privileges.

Learn More

RSS Automat

  • Rupert Murdoch to Retire from News Corp and Fox Boards September 21, 2023 NYT
  • OpenAI's New DALL-E3 Lets Artists Opt-Out of Future Training; Rejects Request to Mimic the Style of Living Artists September 20, 2023 TechCrunch
  • Another Response to AI-Generated Books: KDP Lowers Limit On Number of Titles You Can Create, "To Help Protect Against Abuse" September 18, 2023 KDP Forum
  • TikTok (and Instagram) Stars Sell Cookbooks September 18, 2023 NYT
  • Actor and UK Harry Potter Audiobook Narrator Stephen Fry Demonstrates How His Voice Was Copied By AI Without Permission September 18, 2023 Deadline
  • Neal Sofman, Legend of Bay Area Independent Booksellers, dies at 75 September 15, 2023 SF Chronicle
  • Major Textbook Publishers Trying Suing Shadow Library LibGen Again September 15, 2023 Torrent Freak
  • Deesha Philyaw Has Seven-Figure Deal with Mariner for "The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman" in 2025 and "Girl, Look" September 14, 2023 AP
  • Copyright Office Doubles Down on Declining to Register Award-Winning Midjourney-Created AI Art September 12, 2023 Copyright Review Board document
  • Sarah Weinman on How Richard Osman Found His Way to Mysteries and Success: "The simple answer is that they are really good" September 12, 2023 Esquire
© 2023 Publishers Lunch. All Rights Reserved.