Em Lysaght has joined Ladderbird Literary as agent. Lysaght was previously at Scholastic selling foreign rights.
At Simon & Schuster Children’s Reka Simonsen has been promoted to editorial director for Atheneum Books; Alex Borbolla to associate editor for Atheneum and Caitlyn Dlouhy Books; Elizabeth Mims to assistant production editor for Aladdin and Simon Pulse; Jenica Nasworthy to senior managing editor for S&S Children’s and Paula Wiseman Books; Chloe Foglia to art director for S&S Children’s and Paula Wiseman Books; Nick Sciacca to art director, design and technology at Simon & Schuster Children’s; and Greg Stadnyk to associate art director at S&S Children’s, Atheneum, and Margaret K. McElderry Books.
Simon Blacklock will leave Faber & Faber after 9 years there. He was co-founder and director of the Faber Factory ebook distribution business.
Library Lending
Finally, the American Library Association has answered the question we’ve been asking for months and named Library Content Villain No. 1: “The worst obstacle for libraries are marketplace bans: refusal to sell services at any price. Amazon Publishing, now a large publisher in its own right, ranks as the fifth largest publisher for eBooks by dollar sales…. The eBook titles from Amazon Publishing are not available to libraries for lending at any price or any terms. By contrast, consumers may purchase all of these titles directly from Amazon. This is a particularly pernicious new form of the digital divide; the Amazon Publishing books are available only to people who can afford to buy them, without the library alternative previously available to generations of Americans.” They still fail to mention Amazon as the dominant publisher of audiobooks, also denied to libraries, and they have yet to seek nationwide editorials and petitions denouncing Amazon’s practices, but it’s a start.
Financing
Literati, a monthly subscription service for children’s books founded in 2016, has raised $12 million in Series A financing, led by Shasta Ventures. The company says it now has 40 employees.
Awards
Simon Rich‘s Hits and Misses won the Thurber Prize for American Humor.