Abigail Walters, Carlos Segarra, Emily Westcott, and Alex Rice have each been promoted to agent at CAA. All four are based in New York.
At Aitken Alexander Associates, Emma Paterson joins the board of directors. Chris Wellbelove becomes head of the book department.
At Westwood Creative Artists, Emmy Nordstrom Higdon has joined as literary agent. They were previously at The Rights Factory. Meg Wheeler has been promoted to literary agent, Bridgette Kam to international rights associate, and Sarah-Jayne Carver to literary associate.
Renae Moore joins The Tobias Literary Agency as assistant agent, interested in spec-fic, mystery, thrillers, and select romance for both YA and Adult. She was previously a contract attorney and editorial intern at Tessera Editorial.
Publisher of Random House Books for Young Readers Group Mallory Loehr has been promoted to evp.
Nevin Mays has joined Lunii as head of editorial and content experience, acquiring audio works for kids from 3 to 10 years old.
Journalist, author and president of Random House from 1990 to 1997 Harold Evans, 92, died Wednesday of congestive heart failure.
Closing
The Hessischer Hof hotel in Frankfurt, Germany will close permanently in the fourth quarter of this year after 68 years of operation, due to the falloff in business from the pandemic. “The economic losses caused by Corona are so great that there is no other choice,” says Jens Huwald, a spokesperson for the Hessian House Foundation, which owns the property. The entire staff of 63 people will lose their jobs. The owners anticipate business at the Frankfurt fairgrounds will be diminished for the next two years.
Opening Sales
Further to yesterday’s report from Simon & Schuster, NPD Bookscan tracked sales of approximately 345,000 hardcover copies of Bob Woodward’s RAGE in the first week on sale. Earlier in the week when we announced the expansion of our affordable monthly Bookscan data packages for PublishersMarketplace.com members, we neglected to mention that data subscribers can now also see the weekly chart of top 20 bestsellers, with full unit sales data.
Awards
The Financial Times and McKinsey announced the shortlist for the 2020 Business Book of the Year award:
Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, by Anne Case and Angus Deaton (Princeton University Press)
No Filter, by Sarah Frier (Simon & Schuster)
No Rules Rules, by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer (Penguin Press)
Reimagining Capitalism, by Rebecca Henderson (PublicAffairs)
If Then, by Jill Lepore (Norton)
A World Without Work, by Daniel Susskind (Metropolitan)
Distribution
Book Travelers West is now selling HMH Books & Media in the western region of the US, following the recent retirement of one of their reps.