At Bloomsbury, Laura Keefe has been promoted to senior director, marketing and publicity, adult trade; Tara Kennedy to publicity director; and Ellen Whitaker to marketing associate reporting to Nicole Jarvis. Erica Barmash has been promoted to senior director, marketing and publicity, children’s trade. Mat Nichols has been named associate director of sales at Bloomsbury Academic, reporting to Liza Murphy.
Claire Draper has joined the Bent Agency as an agent. She was previously an assistant at Inkwell Management.
Booksellers
The NYT looked at Mitchell Kaplan‘s role in “putting literary Miami on the map,” saying he “is celebrated as the man who turned Miami into a book town, and one of the foremost literary centers in the world, starting at a time when nobody took it seriously.”
Barnes & Noble filed the employment agreement for new evp, operations Joe Gorman with the SEC. He comes in at a comparable salary and bonus with the other current top executives (still in the absence of a ceo), with a base of $600,000 a year and a target bonus of at least 60 percent of salary. His signing benefits include stock options and a cash sign-on bonus of $400,000.
Forthcoming
Elton John revealed the cover of his forthcoming autobiography, called Me, on YouTube.
Books Coverage
Following the firing of San Francisco Chronicle books editor John McMurtrie at the end of February, the paper’s editor-in-chief Audrey Cooper and deputy managing editor, features Kitty Morgan met at the offices of Heyday Books with some local book publishing people. Cynthia Haven shared notes from the meeting taken by Frances Dinkelspiel on her blog.
They report there are no plans to hire a staff member dedicated to covering plans, and the paper “plans to continue to use a combination of reviews by local writers and reviews purchased from the wire.” Cooper explained the poor performance of reviews on their site: One recent book review only got 25 clicks online, a recent review by Janet Napolitano only got 50 clicks, while some others get 200 clicks. “That level of non-engagement cannot continue, they said.” For now, senior arts editor Robert Morast and former Style editor Laura Compton have responsibility for books coverage.
Wages
Over 4,000 Waterstones employees have signed a petition asking the company to provide booksellers a “living wage” — which is a modest £10.55 ($13.75) in the London area and £9 ($11.75) an hour for the rest of the country. The campaign is being led by bookseller bookseller April Newton.
Managing director James Daunt tells the Bookseller, “There’s a constant debate about the real living wage and we are talking about it. I don’t believe our responsibility as a company is just to deliver that, my responsibility is to deliver good pay and career progression.”