Caroline Osborn has joined Simon & Schuster Children’s as subsidiary rights manager. She was most recently in subsidiary rights at Little, Brown Children’s. Derek Reed has been promoted to senior editor, Currency, Convergent, and Crown Forum. Cami Miller has been promoted to director for mass market sales at Harper Christian. At William Morrow, Eliza Rosenberry has been promoted to senior publicity manager and Camille Collins to publicity manager. Anne Goldberg has joined Phaidon in New York, as project editor, food, reporting to executive commissioning editor Emily Takoudes. Previously she was associate editor at Ten Speed Press. Serene Hakim has been promoted to associate agent and subrights manager at Ayesha Pande […]
Archives for January 2019
The Deal on Deals
As you may recall, last year we did a lot of work on our signature “deals” data stream — adding a number of new categories, revising our main deal reporting form, and creating a new translation rights deal reporting form. Now, by popular demand, we have posted an extensive list of tips on filling on the new forms, as well as explaining some of our policies and practices. Little section headers let you jump to deal report tips (including how to report film/tv deals; translation rights deal report tips (including how and where to note all the levels of sub-agents […]
France Loisirs Book Club (and Shops) Emerges from Bankruptcy
France’s largest book club, France Loisirs, with retail shops as well, announced earlier this week that its year in bankruptcy reorganization is over. In late December, the Paris Commercial Court approved a two-part recovery plan, sources told Agence France-Presse. The first phase, implemented in 2018, preserved 437 jobs (out of a workforce of about 1800 people), closed 35 stores, and moved the corporate headquarters from Paris to Gentilly. The second part of the plan will reportedly refocus the business on books. (In 2013, the company had expanded into cosmetics sales.) The club says it still has over 1 million members. […]
Print Unit Sales Rose 1.3 Percent in 2018
NPD Bookscan’s final count of unit book sales for 2018 came in at 696 million books, a 1.3 percent gain over the 687 million units tracked in 2017. Adding 9 million units over 2017’s total, that is the smallest gain in the latest 5 years, when the print market has grown continuously, even as the ebook units for traditional publishers have declined by larger amounts. (We have amended our preliminary report from last week, which had included some non-book product.) Per our preview last week, adult nonfiction gained 14 million units on its own, up 4.9 percent over 2018. Cooking […]
People, Etc.
Trish Daly will join Portfolio as senior editor, acquiring narrative nonfiction and big idea books in the business and economics space, starting January 14. Most recently, she was editor at Little, Brown. Claire Potter will join Basic Books on January 14 as editor. Most recently, she was associate editor at Crown. Andy Ward has been promoted to senior vice president of the Random House imprint, and Molly Turpin moves up to editor. At Ballantine Bantam Dell, Sara Weiss has been promoted to executive editor; Emily Hartley and Elana Seplow-Jolley to editor; Bridget Kearney to publishing coordinator, business insights; and Thomas Yuhas to […]
Authors Guild Income Survey Sounds Alarms, But Some of the Data Is Encouraging
The Authors Guild published the results of its 2018 Author Income Survey, an expanded polling of 5,067 people they call the largest survey of US professional writers ever conducted. (It included participation from 18 writers organizations and publishing platforms, including Nook Press, the IPBA and Lulu.) But a survey is just that — a measure of those particular 5,000 people that may or may not correspond to the possibly millions of traditionally- and self-published authors. (For one good look at the weakness of author surveys in general, see Jane Friedman’s piece from last June, Author Income Surveys Are Misleading and Flawed—And […]