Macmillan is restructuring its sales team “to more closely align with the needs of Macmillan’s customers and its publishers.” Their separate major account teams will be eliminated, with a single, unified trade team under John Edwards, promoted to the new position of vp, trade and Canada sales. Svp, online digital sales operations and analysis Tom Stouras will now oversee the ebooks sales team, and will continue to manage the Amazon team.
VP, adult mass merchandise sales Laura Pennock will expand her responsibilities to add management of the distribution sales team. Brian Heller moves into the new role of vp, academic, library, wholesale & international. The entire special markets team – retail, gifts, corporate, premium and wholesale – will be placed under a single executive, with Alice Baker promoted to vp, special markets, premium retail, retail, wholesale, reporting directly to evp, sales Jenn Gonzalez. Ken Holland continues as vp, director of field sales, now reporting to Gonzalez directly.
As a result of these changes, the jobs of some company veterans have been eliminated. VP, director of Broadway sales Jeff Capshew is leaving after 23 years with Macmillan; key account executive for mass merchandise Becky Wik leaves after 21 years there; and vp, special markets Jaime Ariza is also departing.
At Little, Brown Children’s, Samantha Gentry has joined as editor; she was previously associate editor at Crown Children’s. Saho Fujii is promoted to senior art director; Karina Granda to associate art director; Nikki Garcia is promoted to editor; Katharine McAnarney is promoted to publicity manager; and Hannah Milton is promoted to assistant editor.
Sarah Armour has joined Adams Media as publicity manager. She was previously with Storey Publishing.
At Princeton University Press, Meagan Levinson becomes head of paperback publishing, overseeing publishing strategy for seasonal paperback lists, while also continuing her work as senior editor for Sociology.
Updating Thursday’s item about changes in personnel covering Books at the San Francisco Chronicle, deputy managing editor, features Kitty Morgan is overseeing books for now. She reports, “We are in talks with other editors about books coverage, which will continue strong. We’ll have the team in place within a few weeks.”
In the UK, Matthew Hamilton is leaving Aitken Alexander Associates to start The Hamilton Agency.
Corporate Earnings
Updating yesterday’s piece on HMH‘s 2018 results, the company had noted (in fine print) during the first quarter that they adjusted their 2017 results, moving approximately $4 million in sales from the trade division to the education division “to better align such sales to the segment selling to the end customer.” (The company had sold some trade product to a reseller that sold it back to the education division, which then resold it as part of a bundled offering. Accounting rules allow recognition of revenue on only one of those sales, so they recategorized it to attribute the revenue to the division that made the sale to the ultimate end user.) HMH’s stock pared some of its losses during Thursday afternoon, and is rising in the first hour of trading on Friday, almost regaining the losses since announcing fourth quarter results.