Simon & Schuster UK ceo and managing director since 2000 Ian Chapman has been promoted to chief executive and publisher for both Simon & Schuster UK and International. (Chapman had already previously taken on oversight for S&S Australia and S&S India.) CEO Carolyn Reidy writes that “going forward, Ian will continue to apply his considerable publishing and leadership skills across all aspects of our UK and international companies as we seek an even greater level of coordination and growth across all our international publishing. He has assembled a terrific team to help him accomplish those and I know that wonderful things will be achieved by Simon & Schuster UK, Australia, and India.”
Within S&S UK, executive director Kerr MacRae has resigned. He had joined the company at the beginning of 2010 “and make a great impact” after 25 years at Hachette, Chapman writes. “He leaves with everyone’s grateful thanks for all he has done on the company’s behalf and the warmest of good wishes for his future endeavours.”
Chapman also announced some executive-level promotions to “facilitate a fast-acting, tight-knit leadership team that will help us to attract authors and thus grow through greater retail presence and market share tied to innovative publishing methods and strategies.”
Suzanne Baboneau moves up to managing director, adult publishing; Ingrid Selberg is promoted to managing director, children’s publishing; Rahul Srivastava is now managing director, Simon & Schuster India; and James Horobin is group sales director. The company is looking to fill a newly-created position of marketing and publicity director.
Also in the UK, Rebecca Saunders has been promoted to deputy publisher at Sphere, as Hannah Bournsell moves up to senior commissioning editor and Manpreet Grewal is now commissioning editor. Rowan Cope has been promoted to senior commissioning editor at Little Brown UK’s Abacus and Virago imprints.
In other personnel announcements, Libby Powell will join Perseus Distribution as client services manager on August 1. Previously she managed distribution, licensing and special sales for Teachers College Press.
Elica Markovska has joined Publishers Communication Group as European business development manager. Previously she was a sales manager for the Burgundy Information Services and had a variety of sales roles at Taylor & Francis.
Longtime director of the Columbia Publishing Course (and before then, its predecessor at Radcliffe) Lindy Hess, 63, died Saturday from lung cancer. Hess had taken a leave from the program in January due to health issues, with assistant director Susan Caplan running the program. Before Hess ran the publishing course, she was editorial director of Doubleday imprint Dolphin Books.
On Demand Books has signed an agreement to install exactly two Espresso Book Machines in Books-A-Million stores: They are starting with a BAM store in Portland, Maine, with the second store location to be announced later. As has been the case elsewhere, the Espresso provides access to about 7 million titles, but it’s really a self-publishing machine (which any store could offer as a service without purchasing their own machine). BAM ceo Terrance G. Finley says in the announcement, “Our customers will also be able to print their self-published works or any user generated content, photo books, recipes, etc. in a matter of minutes and pick it up in our store.”
In awards, the UK’s PEN/Ackerley Prize for memoir and autobiography has gone to Richard Holloway’s LEAVING ALEXANDRIA: A Memoir of Faith and Doubt.