At Bloomsbury, Morgan Jones has been promoted to associate editor; Elizabeth Ellis to assistant editor; Mia Kwon to associate designer, adult trade; Nicole Jarvis to marketing director, adult trade; and Emily Fishman to associate publicist.
At Tom Doherty Associates, Laura Etzkorn and Libby Collins have each been promoted to senior publicist, and Giselle Gonzalez has been promoted to assistant publicist.
Marc Visnick has joined TKO Studios in the newly-created position of vp of sales and business development. Previously, he worked at Ingram as senior business development manager. Colleen Lindsay joins the company as senior manager, marketing and social media, reporting to Visnick. Most recently she was publicity lead at Amazon Publishing.
At Workman Publishing, Caitlin Kleinschmidt has been promoted to associate director of national accounts; Jennifer Mears to senior art director of creative services; and Ashley McPhee to assistant manager, creative services.
Hannah Fergesen has been promoted to senior agent at KT Literary.
Norton Juster, 91, author of children’s books including The Phantom Tollbooth, died on March 8, from complications of a recent stroke. A celebration of Juster’s life will take place at a later date.
A virtual memorial service for longtime children’s books editor David Gale, who passed away last October, will be held on Thursday, March 18 at 5:30 PM EST on Zoom, with no registration required. Speakers will include authors Neal Shusterman, John Lithgow and Gary Paulsen.
Audio
The Scribd Audio imprint, which has released 40 audiobooks so far, officially “launches” with its first celebrity narration partnership”: Daveed Diggs and Lena Waithe perform Natasha Marin’s Black Imagination. The line focuses on books from independent publishers (e.g. companies that do not have their own audio divisions) including McSweeney’s, Counterpoint Press, Unnamed Press, Akashic, Europa Editions, Other Press, Coffee House Press, Mango Publishing, Rare Bird Books, North Star Editions, and Falstaff Books.
Scribd Audio titles are exclusive to the service their subscribers for three months and then distributed broadly. The company says the proceeds to the publisher and author are “fee-based on Scribd and royalty-based when we broadly distribute.” Their “plan is to significantly increase” the catalog by “expanding the number of independent publishers we work with across a broad range of genres.”
Controversies
Crown publisher Gillian Blake told the NYT in response to an email that they have “no plans” to reprint New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s book American Crisis or release a paperback edition, citing “the ongoing investigation into N.Y.S. reporting of Covid-related fatalities in nursing homes.” The company reportedly printed 450,000 copies of the hardcover, with Bookscan registering hardcover sales of approximately 46,000, so there is no foresesable need to reprint, either.