Andrea Hall has joined Beaming Books as senior acquisitions editor. She was formerly editor at Albert Whitman & Company.
Bookselling
Betsy Burton and some of her partners are selling their majority interests in the King’s English Bookshop in Salt Lake City, UT, to Calvin Crosby, currently executive director of the California Independent Booksellers Alliance. Effective July 1, Crosby will join part-owner Anne Holman.
Distribution
Oxford University Press will move their US warehouse and fulfillment operations to Ingram Distribution Solutions this fall. OUP has serviced fulfillment through their own 190,000-square-foot warehouse in Cary, NC, which will close. OUP USA president Niko Pfund tells PL, “We regularly review our warehouse and distribution sites across the world, to ensure that our space and logistics model is fit for purpose. By working with Ingram in this way, we’re confident that we’ll be able to meet the needs of our customers and prepare the Press for whatever lies ahead in future.” A spokesperson indicates that 34 people will be leaving OUP as a result of this change.
Other functions that operate out of the 70,000 square feet of office space in the same location will “relocate…to a local site in the Research Triangle region that is more fit for purpose” for those activities.
Awards
Damon Young won the 2020 Thurber Prize for American Humor for his memoir What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker.
Controversies
The WSJ has comment from Simon & Schuster ceo Jonathan Karp and S&S imprint publisher Dana Canedy on the Mike Pence book acquisition that many staff oppose. Canedy notes, “I thought I might take some hits for acquiring the book but it might be a public service if it helps us understand this man and his administration.” In a two-and-a-half hour meeting with Pence when the book was being shopped, Canedy says, “I made the point that I believe regardless of your politics, everybody has the right to own their narrative and legacy, and he didn’t own it at that point. The Trump administration did. And that he had the right to tell his story.” She also “told him he would have to agree to rigorous editing,” the paper writes.
Karp adds, “We don’t want to be a niche publisher. The former vice president who got 74 million votes is representative of a broad range of people.” The WSJ reports, “Karp said one reason Simon & Schuster is comfortable publishing Mr. Pence is that the former vice president refused to take an action to overturn the election. ‘Look how he upheld his constitutional responsibilities on Jan. 6,’ Mr. Karp said.”
Meanwhile, former S&S ceo Jack Romanos remains proud of all the money he made for the company through Judith Reagan’s acquisition of Rush Limbaugh’s The Way Things Ought to Be. “‘I had a line of people outside my door begging me not to approve the acquisition,’ said Mr. Romanos. The book was a hit, and delivered a large portion of the profits that year.”