At Random House Children’s, Maria Correa joins the Classic Brand team as associate editor. She was previously junior editor at Little Tiger Group. Morgan Maple joins as associate publicist. She was previously publicity assistant at Little, Brown Children’s.
Gisela de la Concepción Fosado has been promoted to editorial director at Duke University Press.
Susan Fissell has been promoted to director, special markets at Simon & Schuster.
Sales manager Nicholas Sinisi has left Diamond Book Distributors. He can be reached at nicholas.sinisi@gmail.com.
Audio
Workman Publishing will publish and distribute audiobooks directly to trade and library channels through its new imprint Workman Audio, effective immediately. Ana Maria Allessi will lead the imprint, focusing on “audiobook production and distribution opportunities for frontlist and backlist titles” and “audio-first publishing opportunities.” She was formerly vp, publisher at Harper Audio and is the current president of the Audio Publishers Association. Findaway will distribute to all markets. Workman Publishing ceo Dan Reynolds said, “Audiobook publishing is one of the true bright spots in our world, and we couldn’t be more excited to get in front of this dynamic growth opportunity—and to have such an experienced, energetic, and respected leader to head our new program.”
Previously, Workman had owned HighBridge Audio until mid-2014. They acquired the company from Target in 2006, and sold it to Recorded Books (now RBMedia), in order to put the company’s “energy in its core strengths.”
Events
The Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, originally scheduled to begin April 15, has been postponed and plans to run from May 23 to 29. (Book Expo in the US is scheduled to begin May 27.)
In the US, the popular five-day Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville plans to proceed starting March 18, though several featured authors have cancelled their participation.
Note: On Friday afternoon we reported on Simon & Schuster’s decision to not attend the rescheduled Bologna Book Fair. That story was included in a special mail we sent shortly after Hachette Book Group announced their cancellation of the Woody Allen memoir. If you did not see that mail, the story is posted here.
Case Closed
The case brought by seven publishers against Audible over their planned Captions feature is now formally concluded, with Judge Valerie Caproni’s signature in place on the permanent injunction barring the audiobook company from displaying text from e-books without the permission of copyright holders. Audible will pay each litigating publisher an undisclosed sum, after which both parties will file final documentation to the court.
The stipulated permanent injunction.
Legal
Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil will rule on Barnes & Noble‘s motion for partial summary judgment in the case filed by former ceo Demos Parneros. Despite contradictory individual rules in her court, since “the motion was filed with leave of Court pursuant to authorization granted by the judge to whom the case was previously assigned and as such was properly filed.”