Susan Ruszala has resigned from her position as president of NetGalley after 10 years with the company developing the business, and is exploring both consulting and full-time positions. She can be reached via sruszala@gmail.com. Fran Toolan has taken over day-to-day operations of NetGalley and “will continue to indefinitely.”
VP, director of publicity at Simon & Schuster Children’s Jennifer Romanello is leaving on September 15, and will join Emi Battaglia Public Relations as a partner on October 1. (Romanello and Battaglia worked together for 20 years at Warner Books and Grand Central.) S&S Children’s president Jon Anderson writes, “In the two years she has been here, Jennifer has done a remarkable job rebuilding our publicity department and putting together a top-notch team of publicity professionals.”
Kimberly Brower has left the Rebecca Friedman Literary Agency to start her own literary agency, Brower Literary & Management. Joining her at the new agency are associate agents Jess Dallow and Aimee Ashcraft.
Victoria Marini has joined the Irene Goodman Literary Agency as a literary agent where she will continue to focus on middle grade, YA and adult fiction, and select non-fiction. She was previously at Gelfman Schneider/ICM.
Janelle DeLuise will join Little, Brown Children’s as rights director on September 19. She was most recently associate director of international rights at Scholastic.
At Crown, Rose Fox has been promoted to assistant editor.
Victory Matsui has joined One World as editor. Matsui had been at Little, Brown before going freelance.
Kira Egan joined Abrams as trade sales representative on August 29, calling on Baker & Taylor, Diamond Comics, and NYC independent bookstores. Egan was assistant manager and sidelines buyer at Bank Street Books. Jennifer Bastien has joined the company as a publicist for the adult trade department. She was an associate publicist at DK.
Jenny Meyer will take over translation rights for agent Julie Barer’s list (excluding Asia). Meyer already represents rights for The Book Group’s Elisabeth Weed and Brettne Bloom, and adult titles for Faye Bender. UK/ANZ rights to Barer’s titles remain with Caspian Dennis at Abner Stein.
Franklin & Siegal Associates has been named literary scout for Kalla Kulor in Sweden.
Awards
The Book Industry Study Group will present their Award for Excellence to John Ingram at the organization’s annual meeting. The Distinguished Service Award is being given to all 15 BISG committee and working croup chairs.
Canada’s Giller Prize announced their longlist of 12 titles, with the finalists to be named on September 26.
Interviews
LitHub’s latest interview with a gatekeeper features Nan Talese — whom Michael Korda nicknamed “Velvet Hammer” (“I think it’s because I’m very passionate about what I do.”) Her formula remains the same: “I’m sticking to acquiring good literature. It might not sell, but happily, the president of Knopf Doubleday likes what I do.” As Talese notes, in choosing what to publish, “really, there are three things for me: one is that the author is a storyteller; two that she or he uses the language very well and three, that she or he is passionate about the subject; that transfers to the reader.”
While Talese’s focus has remained consistent, on the larger landscape she suggests, “I think publishing is going through its adolescence, through some growing pains. Some people have given up, and happily Sonny Mehta hasn’t. There are so many independent publishers now, and some people are publishing on the Internet, then you have the reliable old publishers, which are getting perhaps too big…. I think it may be just too much. It’s gotten so corporate. We all go on doing the same things we used to do but the finances are more corporate and you get so much information coming at you. It’s just too much. What’s happening to publishing is it’s very unprofitable now because people are going so fast and have lost touch with the authors unless they write bestsellers. People have to be able to sit still and concentrate to read a book.”