Lynn Kovach has been promoted to vice president, director of national accounts, Random House Adult, newly overseeing sales for the division and PRH Audio to Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble.
Stephen Hull will join the University of New Mexico Press as director on September 17, also serving as a professor of practice in publishing for UNM’s College of University Libraries and Learning Sciences. Previously he spent nine years at Dartmouth College as editor and publisher at the University Press of New England.
Zoe Nelson will join Janklow & Nesbit UK in September as rights director, after eight years at Rogers, Coleridge and White.
Frontlist children’s buyer Bethany Strout has been promoted to director of buying at the Tattered Cover Bookstore.
M&A
In addition to the sale of The Overlook Press to Abrams, Duckworth Publishers — also owned by the late Peter Mayer since 2003 — has sold the majority of its publishing assets to recently-formed Prelude Books. They say “Duckworth will become an important and growing imprint of Prelude Books, adding to existing nonfiction imprint Prelude and sitting alongside rapidly expanding humorous fiction imprint Farrago.” Duckworth head of trade sales Matt Casbourne will join Prelude, and the Bookseller reports that the three other Duckworth employees “are leaving by agreement.” Duckworth has been distributed by Bloomsbury, and Prelude is distributed by Macmillan UK.
Picks
The August Pennie’s Pick at Costco is Fly Girls by Keith O’Brien.
Distribution
Casemate Group will begin distributing Bauhan Publishing on November 1 and the International Polar Institute on January 1, 2019. Currently, they are distributed by the University Press of New England, which will close at the end of 2018.