At Writers House, Maria Aughavin has been promoted to evp, finance; Albert Araneo moved up to evp, business affairs; and Cecilia de la Campa is now evp, global media & licensing.
Jonathan Morris has been promoted to production coordinator at Random House Children’s.
Rights
At the end of the year Penguin Random House Canada is taking back in-house the sub-rights business that they turned over to The Cooke Agency International in 2009, in “a strategic shift…in order to drive international growth across our publishing.” Adrienne Tang has been hired as vp, subsidiary rights, reporting to ceo Kristin Cochrane. Tang was at Kids Can Press. Cochrane thanks the staff at Cooke in her announcement: “I am grateful for all they have done on behalf of our authors and their books, and for how gracious they’ve been about this change, understanding as they do that the time is right for us to bring this function in house. We first discussed this change in early January, but agreed to put things on hold while we all dealt with the changes brought about in our businesses by the pandemic.”
February Announcements
They came in a wave, all announced for publication on February 16, 2021:
Former 60 Minutes producer Ira Rosen‘s memoir TICKING CLOCK, from St. Martin’s, “revealing intimate, untold stories of his decades at America’s most iconic news show.”
Former NBA star Kevin Garnett‘s memoir, writing with David Ritz, KG A TO Z: AN UNCENSORED ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LIFE, BASKETBALL AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN, from Simon & Schuster.
And Bill Gates‘s book, originally expected from Doubleday in June 2020, announced the same pub date, along with the title: HOW TO AVOID A CLIMATE DISASTER (and now it will be published by Knopf).
Further out, Edward St. Aubyn‘s DOUBLE BLIND will be published by Harvill Secker in the UK in March, with Farrar, Straus publishing in the US on June 1. “An ambitious and thrilling synthesis of art, science, and philosophy,” it is his first major work since concluding the Patrick Melrose series in 2012 with AT LAST.
Agency News
The Agency in the UK — which represents children’s books (including Michael Bond’s Paddington Bear) and dramatic rights for a number of top authors as part of a larger representation business focused on writers and directors in film, television and theatre — has sold a majority stake to talent management company Avalon.
