At Harper Children’s, Audrey Diestelkamp has been promoted to director, marketing; Robert Imfeld to associate director; Sabrina Abballe to senior manager; and Michael D’Angelo to assistant manager.
At Phaidon, vice president, group publisher, Deb Aaronson will now manage the entire editorial group, overseeing commissioning in all of Phaidon’s publishing categories, including art, architecture, cookery, design, general interest, photography, and children’s. Emilia Terragni has taken on a new role as associate publisher. Simon Hunegs has been promoted to project editor. Ellie Smith has rejoined in the role of managing editor, culinary team.
Sarah Sullivan will join Scholastic on February 1 as national accounts manager, Readerlink. She was previously senior account executive at Disney Publishing Worldwide.
Among a number of people at ICM promoted from coordinator to agent across the agency were literary agents Andrianna Yeatts and Jennifer Simpson (who services clients in podcast, audio and serials).
Kuo-Yu Liang, who recently joined the board of BINC, has launched Ku Worldwide, a pop-culture publishing consultancy.
Awards
Monique Roffey‘s the The Mermaid of Black Conch won the overall Costa Book of the Year award.
The Jewish Book Council announced winners to the National Jewish Book Awards.
Funding
Literati, the children’s book club subscription service that added celebrity “luminary” book clubs for adults last fall, announced raising $40 million in a Series B round to “further invest in deep product and technological innovation in the book and literature space.”
Alas, founder Jessica Ewing “intends to use the fresh round of capital to invest in data science and personalization for the kids book selection side of the business,” since nothing knows literature and kids like code. “To take something like machine learning, and use it for a purpose, like matching the right book to the right kids, so they fall in love with reading and education is something I’m really excited about.”