Colleen Boyle has been promoted to publicity manager at Penguin Press.
Morgan Rath has been promoted to publicist at Macmillan Children’s.
Steven Tran has been promoted to sales manager at Soho Press.
Books Inc. director of operations Andy Perham will take over as president and ceo when Michael Tucker retires later this year, and operations manager George Seamer will move up to director of operations.
Publicist and book marketer Claire McKinney has founded Plum Bay Publishing, providing assisted self-publishing and some traditional publishing.
Hachette Book Group announced a number of promotions in its sales department. In wholesale, Julie Hernandez is promoted to senior director; Heidi Kanter and Laura Shepherd are each promoted to senior national accounts manager. In mass merchant sales, Tracy Dowd moves up to senior director of club and airport sales; Tishana Knight to sales manager; and John Lefler to national account manager. John Leary becomes regional director, field sales. In account marketing, John Byron, III is promoted to sales promotion manager. In children’s Sales, Katie Tucker is promoted to senior national accounts manager. In Nashville/CBA sales, David Chaudhry and Linda Pearles each move up to national accounts manager. Jill Reschop-Gonzalez becomes associate director, sales operations. Leah Collins Lipsett is promoted to marketing coordinator, HBG Canada. In special markets, Frankie Johnson moves up to manager, specialty retail. Ali Cutrone is promoted to senior director, online sales and sales liaison for Grand Central; Mary Urban to senior digital account manager; and Claire Gamble to national account manager.
Justin Ractliffe has been named publishing director at Penguin Random House Australia New Zealand, as Nikki Christer takes the new role of publisher at large.
Obituaries
Author and director of the University Press of Virginia Mark Saunders died over the weekend from a heart attack at age 52. The press writes, “We will remember him as a man of great intelligence and wit, always ready to make us laugh while leading us to the right decision.”
Winner of the 2002 Caine prize for African writing, author and gay rights activist Binvavanga Wainaina died Tuesday in Nairobi after a short illness at age 48.
Forthcoming
Hilary Mantel‘s long-awaited final book in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy, THE MIRROR & THE LIGHT, will be published March 10, 2020 by Holt, and on March 5 in the UK by 4th Estate. She won the Booker Prize twice for the first two books in the series, WOLF HALL and BRING UP THE BODIES. She says in the announcement, “This book has been the greatest challenge of my writing life, and the most rewarding; I hope and trust my readers will find it has been worth the wait….I hope they will stay with me as we walk the last miles of Cromwell’s life, ascending to unprecedented riches and honor and abruptly descending to the scaffold at Tower Hill.”
Awards
Jokha Alharthi‘s Celestial Bodies, translated by Marilyn Booth from Arabic (Sandstone Press) won the Booker International Prize.
Bookselling
Barnes & Noble opens a new 12,200-square-foot store today at the Veranda in Concord, CA (northwest of Oakland). Half Price Books will open a store later this year in a nearby mall, Willows Shopping Center.
Distribution
Simon & Schuster will distribute Meredith Wild’s Waterhouse Press worldwide starting November 1.