John Donovan will join Norton’s UK subsidiary, W.W. Norton & Company as managing director, starting July 1. Donovan was most recently regional director, UK and Europe, for McGraw Hill Education. Current managing director Edward Crutchley will retire in July, though he will continue to serve on the governing board of W.W. Norton.
Heidi Luedemann has been promoted to contracts director, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, succeeding the late Bill Shannon, effective immediately, and reporting to David Sanford, senior vp, executive director, contracts & permissions, Penguin Random House US.
Awards
The James Beard Foundation presented their book awards Wednesday afternoon, with The Whole Fish Cookbook by Josh Niland (Hardie Grant Books) winning Book of the Year. Find the full list of winners here.
The Boston Globe–Horn Book Award winners were named on Wednesday.
Distribution
The Creative Company will distribute Amicus Publishing and Black Rabbit Books, starting June 1.
Opening Sales
Suzanne Collins‘ The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes sold approximately 270,000 hardcovers in the first week on sale, as tracked by NPD Bookscan. (Update: That was the sales count for the market-wide edition, only. With all editions rolled up together, including retailer-exclusive editions, Bookscan shows total hardcover sales in the first week of almost 390,000 units.) Scholastic says they sold over 500,000 units across all formats.
The Hunger Games prequel helped to lift the overall market as well. NPD Bookscan recorded sales of 13.22 million print books for the week, bouncing back from 12.52 million books a week ago. All of the gains came from juvenile books (4.51 million units, up from 4.02 million a week) and young adult, where Collins’ new book was counted, at 678,000 books, up from 386,000 the previous week. Adult hardcovers declined 6.9 percent for the week.