Mary Ann Naples will join Hachette Books as vice president and publisher and “will oversee its growth as a major commercial nonfiction imprint,” along with overseeing the “ongoing integration” of the Hachette Books imprint with Da Capo Press and Lifelong. She was vice president and publisher at the Disney Book Group. (Naples’ second job in publishing in the early 90s was editor at Hyperion; that list was acquired by HBG in 2013 and became the foundation of Hachette Books when it was created in 2014.) CEO of Hachette Book Group Michael Pietsch says in the announcement, “Mary Ann Naples is a strategic thinker, an energized leader, and a great collaborator with authors and with the many groups publishers work through to realize their vision. Authors, literary agents, booksellers, librarians, and media will quickly sense the breadth and force of her publishing skills.”
Ashley McClay has been promoted to associate publisher, director of marketing at Putnam.
In Germany, president and publisher of S. Fischer Jorg Bong will step down as of May 31 to focus on writing his Brittany Mystery series, under his pen name Jean-Luc Bannalec. Siv Bublitz, currently evp editorial and strategy, will succeed him as president and publisher.
Novelist Jonathan Baumbach, 85, author of 12 novels including Reruns, died at his home in Great Barrington, MA on March 28.
Matt Wixon, 41, co-owner of Capitol Hill books in Washington D.C., died in late March of cancer.
Lists
Last Week Tonight With John Oliver’s parody book A DAY IN THE LIFE OF MARLON BUNDO registered another milestone, penetrating the American Library Association‘s annual list of the most “challenged” books of 2018, ranking No. 2 behind Alex Gino’s middle-grade novel GEORGE.
Bookselling
D.C.’s Politics and Prose postponed an event for author Max Blumenthal at their location at The Warf, after a number of people complained about Blumenthal’s views on Syria. Blumenthal’s talk was to center on his new book The Management of Savagery: How America’s Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump, but the Syrian American Council, which advocates for US and United Nations intervention in Syria, tweeted about the event, calling Blumenthal “an Assad supporter who has mocked victims of war crimes,” and urging followers to speak out.
Co-owner Bradley Graham said, “We were caught off guard by a number of people who were reaching out to us and the passion of their comments.” Graham says the event will still happen in the future, possibly reframed as an in-conversation with another author. “We just didn’t have enough information to be able to assess what some of Max’s critics were saying,” he said, “and so we just needed some time and also, I wanted to read his book. I haven’t read it yet.”