At Balzer + Bray, Sara Sargent has been promoted to associate editor.
In the UK, Joel Rickett has been promoted to publisher of Viking UK and Portfolio UK.
Ruth Alltimes will move to Harper Children’s UK as publishing director, fiction in January, reporting to fiction and licensed properties director, Rachel Denwood. She has been publishing director of the fiction list at Macmillan Children’s UK.
Patti Smith discusses with Billboard her plans for a few books she is working on “simultaneously,” including her next memoir. She says it “is in more of the ‘Just Kids’ vein and even in the similar time period, but shifts more to family, Fred [Smith], music. So it’s a different perspective. ‘Just Kids’ was very focused on Robert [Mapplethorpe] and my relationship with Robert and wanting to be an artist, and the next book will be more, perhaps, music-based.” (Bear in mind that the award-winning JUST KIDS took about 10 years from deal to publication.)
The Smoking Gun publishes an excerpt from court papers filed on December 14 which Hachette Book Group sued author Richard Ben Cramer, 62. According to the complaint, HBG seeks repayment of $550,000 in advances for a two-book deal starting with a book about Alex Rodriguez and the Yankees. ($500,000 was paid to Cramer upon signing the deal, of a total of $1.5 million; another $50,000 was paid to him as part of an amended agreement in 2009.) HBG terminated its relationship with Cramer in September 2011 for his failure to deliver a portion of the manuscript by February 2010, and seeks the return of Cramer’s advance plus interest, expenses, and attorney fees.