John McKay has joined the Association of American Publishers (AAP) as senior vice president, communications. He was most recently an executive officer with the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Previously, he was a vp of communications for both NBC Universal and Sony Music Entertainment.
Nancy Ellwood has joined Arcadia Publishing to launch a new local publishing program for children. She was previously editorial director at DK. Arcadia president and ceo David Steinberger said in the release, “Retailers everywhere are telling us that their customers are hungry for local content, and we keep getting asked to add a hyper-local program for kids. We’re listening to our customers, and we couldn’t be more pleased to have Nancy Ellwood, such a proven and talented children’s publishing leader, joining the Arcadia team.”
Eden Sugay has been promoted to associate marketing manager, events and retail marketing at Chronicle Books.
Meagan Szekely has been promoted to digital marketing and database manager for Naval Institute Press.
Italian author Andrea Camilleri, who wrote the Inspector Montalbano series, has died at the age of 93.
Forthcoming
Jimmy Kimmel’s children’s book THE SERIOUS GOOSE will published by Random House Children’s on December 3 with an announced first printing of 500,000 copies. Kimmel is writing, illustrating, and hand-lettering the book.
Corporate
In a brief trading update for the four months ending June 30, Bloomsbury said sales so far in their new fiscal year were down 3 percent, which they call “in line with management expectations.” Consumer/trade sales were the weak spot, attributed to comparison to a strong period last year, with their non-consumer division rising in the period.
Retail
As you probably noticed, retailers of all kinds have finally figured out how to counter program against Amazon’s promotional Prime Day. Independent audiobook player Libro.fm declared in a press release that they enjoyed “the highest number of audiobook membership sign-ups over a two-day period in the history of the company.” CEO Mark Pearson notes, “This year we used Prime Day to tell a story about the audiobook curation and community offered through local bookstores. As a result, we had a record number of customers switch from Amazon’s Audible to a local bookstore.’