Elizabeth Trout has been promoted to assistant editor at Kensington.
Corporate
LSC Communications has renamed its books division — which includes Dover Publications — Lakeside Book Company. CEO Dave McCree said, “The Lakeside name is a nod to our roots and symbolic of the trust our company has earned to help stories of all kinds be shared. We have taken the opportunity to revisit our company values and align ourselves around the true purpose of our business: crafting books for readers and serving our publishing customers.”
Controversies
Elin Hilderbrand asked Little, Brown to remove the reference to Anne Frank in her new novel Golden Girl. The publisher said Friday, “We are removing this passage from the digital edition of the book immediately, and from all future print editions.”
Bookselling
NYC’s Books of Wonder is closing its Upper West Side location on 84 Street and looking for a new location to move into by the end of summer or the beginning of fall.
On Friday afternoon, Penguin Random House UK and Waterstones announced together that they had returned to normal business conditions: “Penguin Random House UK is pleased to have returned to business as usual with Waterstones and both companies look forward to continuing to work together closely as partners.”
Awards
Last week, Canada’s Governor General’s literary awards belatedly announced their winners for 2020, delayed by the pandemic, which included Five Little Indians by Michelle Good for fiction.
Initiatives
We Need Diverse Books announced that it will no longer refer to books using the term #OwnVoices. Instead, they will use “specific descriptions that authors use for themselves and their characters whenever possible (for example, “Korean American author,” or “autistic protagonist”).” They write in the release that the hashtag was originally created “for readers to recommend books by authors who openly shared the diverse identity of their main characters,” but has since become a “catch all marketing term” and caused problems with its vagueness.
The Office
Pan Macmillan in the UK will reopen their offices for voluntary use this summer and expects to be fully reopened by October. At that point, while they expect many people will “want and need to work at least two to three days per week in the office, depending on their role,” they are not requiring it. CEO Anthony Forbes Watson said: “Our approach to future working embodies the conviction that our consistent success has been based on an open, trust-based operating model, which attracts and energizes exceptional people and prioritizes the development and wellbeing of everyone who works here.”