Following the departure of Gillian Blake for Crown Trade in early December, new Holt publisher Ben Schrank has filled the editor-in-chief position from within the company. Executive editor Serena Jones is being promoted to editor in chief. Metropolitan Books publisher and co-founder Sara Bershtel moves up to senior vice president (with Maggie Richards being named a vice president). Schrank notes the Elton John autobiography releases this fall, with the publisher confirming a worldwide publication date of October 15.
Publishing director at Penguin Press UK Helen Conford will move to Profile Books in May, where she will take over from Andrew Franklin as publisher. She will be part of “a newly expanded Executive” (that must mean something in English English) comprising managing director Franklin, finance director Frances Ford, commercial director Diana Broccardo, UK sales director Claire Beaumont, and Serpent’s Tail publisher Hannah Westland.
Underscored in Tuesday’s investor call (and not noted by us when first announced in February), Jesse Wiley was recently named non-executive chairman of the Board at Wiley. He takes over from Matthew Kissner, who will leave the board and serve operationally as evp and group executive, reporting to ceo Brian Napack. (Also, Tuesday’s report on Wiley’s earnings has been expanded with more of Napack’s investor call remarks on plans for bolstering the slide in book publishing.)
At Hachette Audio: Kim Sayle is promoted to vp, associate publisher; Elece Green moves up to producer; and Nita Basu is now assistant manager, marketing & publicity.
At Simon & Schuster, Leora Bernstein has moved over to the National Accounts team from the telemarketing sales group as a national accounts manager.
At Running Press, Britny Brooks becomes assistant editor; Jess Fromm Riordan has been promoted to editor; and Dan Cantada moves up to senior marketing designer, digital brand manager. Val Howlett becomes senior publicity and marketing manager, Running Press Kids. At Black Dog & Leventhal, Katie Benezra has been promoted to associate design director and Kara Thornton to publicity manager. Betsy Hulsebosch adds director of ad and sales promotion, Running Press and Black Dog & Leventhal to her title of marketing director, Black Dog & Leventhal.
Liz Gately is now scouting for Harper France.
Writer and vice president of PEN International Moris Farhi, 84, died at home on Wednesday after a long struggle with heart problems.
Awards
The PEN/Faulkner Award finalists are:
Blanche McCrary Boyd, Tomb of the Unknown Racist (Counterpoint)
Richard Powers, The Overstory (Norton)
Ivelisse Rodriguez, Love War Stories (Feminist Press)
Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, Call Me Zebra (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Willy Vlautin, Don’t Skip Out on Me (Harper)
Bookselling
Amazon Books has opened their nineteenth location, in Denver’s Cherry Creek neighborhood (as first suggested last August, though not confirmed by the company at the time).
Events
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor will appear at BookExpo on Thursday, May 30 for an evening event ahead of the release of her book picture book, Just Ask: Be Different, Be Brave, Be You in September. The event runs from 6:15 PM to 7:15 PM and requires advance registration.
Factoids
The WSJ posted a database that extracts the salary for the median employee at most large, publicly-traded US companies, “disclosing how much a typical employee makes.” From publishing-related companies, that media salary is $55,475 at News Corp. and $55,383 at Wiley, with printer LSC Communications coming in at $35,739. In retail, they list Barnes & Noble at $10,336, with BN College at $5,604.