Author and editor Retha Powers will join Holt as editor-at-large on May 1. President and publisher Amy Einhorn writes, “I have known Retha for almost 20 years and I, like everyone who has had the privilege of working with her, have always been enormously impressed by her intellect and passion for books. I am incredibly excited that she will now bring that passion to Holt as she seeks to publish new voices in both fiction and narrative nonfiction.”
At Abrams Children’s, Meredith Mundy has been promoted to editorial director, preschool. Courtney Code becomes editor.
At Andrews McMeel, Amy Strassner has been promoted to senior production editor; Jasmine Lim to production editor; Julie Railsback to senior production editor; Sierra Stanton to assistant art director; and Allison Adler to senior editor.
Bloomsbury has promoted Jenny Ridout to managing director of their non-consumer division, ahead of the previously-announced retirement of Jonathan Glasspool in July.
In the UK, Pan Macmillan publishing director Vicki Mellor will go on maternity leave starting in March. Gillian Green, currently fiction publishing director at Ebury, will cover Mellor’s position for 12 months, beginning April 6.
Oliver Holden-Rea has joined Welbeck as senior commissioning editor, working on a new narrative non-fiction list. He was most recently with Blink.
Unvarnished
Linked to in brief yesterday, we present James Daunt‘s comments in full on why — despite four years of growing profits and recent earnings of £22.7 million, Waterstones is raising pay for entry-level booksellers by the required minimum only, to £8.21, well below what the Living Wage Foundation estimates as necessary to live on”
“We haven’t done what would be relatively easy for us to do, which is not pay quite so much to our managers, assistant managers, leads, experts and all of these other ranks we have, where most of our employees are employed. We haven’t taken away money from them and raised our entry-level minimum wage to the living wage. I wouldn’t get any of this grief, but that would be to betray the basic principle by which we’ve been running the business, which is that it’s our booksellers who are driving it forward. I am committed to putting as much pay as we can into those ranks.”
“It’s not that Waterstones is paying lower than all other retail jobs,” he continued. “What we do offer is that if you do stay with us – and we promote pretty quickly – the vast, vast majority of people will be promoted more or less on an annual anniversary and the best sooner than that. Obviously then you start earning more.”
He Daunt estimated it would cost £5 million for the retailer to pay all booksellers a living wage. “I fear going bust in three, four years’ time because I’ve loaded up my cost base too much and that’s unsustainable.”