Veronica Park has joined Fuse Literary as an associate agent. She was previously literary agent and marketing specialist at Corvisiero Literary Agency.
Alexandra Franklin has been promoted to associate agent at the Vicky Bijur Literary Agency.
Maya Baran has joined Viking Penguin as publicity manager, returning to publishing full-time. Most recently she has assisted Broadside PR and The Countryman Press.
The ALA has named Melinda Gates the honorary chair of National Library Week, starting April 7.
At Porter Square Books in Cambridge, MA, Leila Meglio has joined as events manager. Most recently, she was publicity associate at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Sarah Rettger becomes inventory manager.
Bookselling
Hannah Oliver Depp, managing partner of Upshur Street Books in Washington DC, is buying the store from owner Paul Ruppert and renaming it Loyalty Bookstore. Depp plans to focus on children’s books, remodel the interior, and add events.
Legal
On Friday, Google rejected Stephen Elliot‘s “invalid, overly broad, and unduly burdensome” request to provide data that would reveal the creators of the S—-y Media Men list, in a letter to his attorneys, filed with the court by Moira Donegan’s counsel.
Google’s Letter.
Milestones
Scribd announced that they have surpassed 1 million subscribers worldwide to their digital reading service. That’s up from “over 700,000” subscribers in February 2018, when the company returned to mostly unlimited subscriptions (except for pesky “high volume readers”). A year ago, the company said about 50 percent of subscribers were from outside of the US and their current growth plans seemed focused on international markets.
Harper Collins chief digital officer Chantal Restivo-Alessi tells TechCrunch the resumption of unlimited audiobook listening looks to be a strong part of Scribd’s growth: “We expected the digital ebook market to be a bigger part of our and their business now, and we have been positively surprised by the uptake in digital audio. We have continued to calibrate our catalog offer in line with the evolution of Scribd’s platform and customer base. And we continue to be pleasantly surprised by the depth of exposure that the platform provides to our backlist.”