Kristin Fassler will return to Penguin Random House on October 5, in the new role of svp, director of integrated marketing strategy for the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, reporting to Maya Mavjee. All divisional marketing functions will report to Fassler. She “will build and lead a state-of-the-art marketing department centralized across all imprints that incorporates title marketing, social media marketing, advertising, promotion and creative services, online optimization, audience development, consumer insights and analytics, and campaign ROI.”
At Knopf, Chris Gillespie is being promoted to svp, publishing director, effective October 5, reporting to Reagan Arthur, helping with “the logistics of our publishing program, supporting internal publishing operations and our collaborative work with sales and managing editorial.”
Beth Lamb has been promoted to svp, deputy publisher of Vintage Anchor, reporting to Suzanne Herz. Executive director of publicity James Meader will report to Lamb, and Angie Venezia has been promoted to director of publicity, reporting to Meader.
Chris Park has joined DeFiore & Company as agent. She was at Foundry Literary + Media.
Shira Perlmutter will be promoted in late October to serve as Register of Copyrights and director of the U.S. Copyright Office. Since 2012 she has been chief policy officer and director for international affairs at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, working in all areas of intellectual property, including copyright.
Obituaries
Wiley board member William Edward (Bill) Pence IV, 57, died in early September following a recent diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Wiley board chair Jesse Wiley remembers Pence as “a trusted advisor and a champion of transformation, from culture to tech driven innovation, never one to shy away from disruptive ideas that would help us move forward. His care, expertise, wisdom, insight, passion and presence will be greatly missed in and outside our board. Bill was an all-around great human being.”
Author of Guess How Much I Love You Sam McBratney, 77, died on September 18. Guess How Much I Love You is reported to have sold over 50 million copies worldwide, translated into 57 languages. The anticipated companion book Will You Be My Friend? published September 29.
Picks
Reese Witherspoon‘s YA Book Club pick for September is Furia by Yamile Saied Mendez.
Bookselling
On Friday, Amazon Books opened their twenty-third store, in Houston, at the Baybrook Mall in Friendswood. Another location is listed as “coming soon” in Cerritos, CA (between Los Angeles and Anaheim) at the Los Cerritos Center.
Following the consultation period announced in July, Waterstones has laid off 16 people from its head office staff due to a “challenging trading climate.”
Piracy
The Educational Publishers Enforcement Group (EPEG) won a preliminary injunction September 18 against 63 pirated eBook websites that drive sales through ads served on Google and Bing search engines. The injunction — barring Google and Microsoft from serving the pirate’s ads, and barring the payment processors, domain hosts and other internet service providers from serving the pirate sites — will remain in place until the case is decided in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. “Once again, the Court has shown that illegal behavior doesn’t pay for the operators of these pirate websites. Selling illegal eBooks harms authors, publishers and everyone else involved in the legitimate textbook industry. Publishers are committed to protecting their investment in scholarship, academic instruction and learning,” said Matt Oppenheim, who serves as lead counsel to EPEG publishers, which include Cengage, Elsevier, Macmillan Learning, McGraw Hill and Pearson.