Brant Rumble will join Blue Rider Press as senior editor on February 2. Previously he was senior editor at Scribner.
Ingram Content Group chief operating officer Shawn Morin has been given the additional title and responsibilities of president. CEO John Ingram syas in the announcement: “Shawn Morin has provided great leadership for our team at Ingram, especially over the past two years. As much as we’re a distribution business, we’re also a technology business. Shawn is a businessman who is very knowledgeable and fluent in technology, which enables everything we do.”
Lucas Hunt has joined Orchard Literary, a literary agency spinoff of PR firm Orchard Strategies, as director. Previously he was an agent and foreign rights manager at the Philip Spitzer Literary Agency, where he worked for 7 years. Hunt will work with Orchard founder (and attorney) Christina Daigneault, as the new agency looks to “cater to all aspects of an author’s multidimensional platform.”
At Da Capo’s Lifelong Books, Kate Burke has been promoted to director of publicity.
At The Experiment, Nick Cizek has been promoted to editor.
At Other Press, Charlotte Kelly has been promoted to publicist.
W. Ralph Eubanks will leave the Virginia Quarterly Review, where he has been editor-in-chief since June 2013, next June when his contract — which was not renewed — expires. Publisher Jon Parrish Peede told the Washington Post: “Our print magazine could not have been led by a finer person than Ralph. He is an engaged editor and a dedicated colleague. He conceived of— and is editing — our spring issue on food. Going forward, VQR will continue our themed magazine issues, will add section editors for categories such as poetry and science, and will focus additional editorial effort on online long-form journalism, multimedia and e-books to serve and expand our audience. We will reallocate our operational budget to achieve these and related goals.”
The German Book Office will present their 2015 Friedrich Ulfers Prize to Bob Weil at Liveright, honoring “his contribution to the dissemination of German-language literature in the United States.”
Former longtime literary editor for The New Republic Leon Wieseltier will join The Atlantic as a contributing editor and critic.
Seven Arthur books from bestselling children’s book author and illustrator Marc Brown are being issued today in ebook editions for the first time, from Amazon Publishing’s Two Lions imprint.
Author Moses Naim found out about Mark Zuckerberg‘s selection of THE END OF POWER for his Year of Books initiative on Twitter. And his publisher Basic Books also “learned about it at the same time as everybody else did,” according to Perseus Books Group ceo David Steinberger. The company says the book has sold more than 4,500 ebooks since Zuckerberg’s announcement, and they received orders from booksellers for 10,000 print copies. Time is of the essence, given Zuckerberg’s intention to read and discuss a new book every two weeks. (The book is also available as part of Scribd and Oyster’s subscription plans, which will serve as an interesting test.)
Author Nicholas Sparks is separating from his wife Cathy after 25 years of marriage. He told People magazine: “This is, of course, not a decision we’ve made lightly. We remain close friends with deep respect for each other and love for our children. For our children’s sake, we regard this as a private matter.”
The individual Costa Book Award winners were announced Monday afternoon, among them:
Fiction: Ali Smith, How to Be Both
Debut Fiction: Emma Healey, Elizabeth Is Missing
Nonfiction: Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk
Children’s: Kate Saunders, Five Children on the Western Front
Poetry: Jonathan Edwards, My Family and Other Superheroes
The overall winner will be announced on January 27.