Harper Plus Again, with Burnham; Avalon Absorbs Shoemaker in Full; Anansi is Minus Sharpe One of our favored rumored candidates for an executive position at Harper has gotten the job, as the company announced yesterday that Miramax Books president and editor-in-chief Jonathan Burnham will join as publisher of the Harper imprint, reporting to Michael Morrison. His starting date is “being determined.” Burnham’s news merits short items in such papers as the LA Times and the NY Daily News, in the context of the practically-foregone conclusion of what happens to Miramax Books after the Weinstein’s finalize their exit from Disney. With […]
Lunch for Monday, March 7
More Personnel News Lynn Grady will become associate publisher for Morrow, HarperEntertainment and Eos starting next week, reporting to Lisa Gallagher. Grady moves over from her job as marketing director at Regan Books. Kim Hadney will take Grady’s old post at Regan Books. She was most recently director of advertising and promotion at Dutton and Gotham. On the publishing minus side of the equation, PW notes that Susan Weinberg, who was publisher for the HarperCollins imprint, is leaving the house. On the scouting front, Japanese publisher Aspect has named Altair Book Scouts and Nicholas Smith as their US scout for […]
Lunch for Friday, March 4
Our Own News We have a number of new initiatives and refinements to tell you about. The first is that we have significantly improved and relaunched our Who Represents database. The new version presents about 12,500 individual representation records, and along the way implements more consistent agent and agency names, and eliminates previous duplication. As before, the search page also presents matches from a couple hundred PublishersMarketplace pages posted by agents, as well as deal database matches. (We’re now shuttling relevant data more quickly from the deal reports over to Who Represents.) To encourage and facilitate continuing improvement of the […]
Lunch for Thursday, March 3
As Indicated Yesterday This Lunch was rudely prepared while we were paying only partial (but continuous) attention to the speakers at today’s AAP annual meeting. Convened in NY this year (rather than the usual Washington venue), the event drew somewhere between 250 and 300 people. (In the absence of invited opening speaker Laura Bush, DisneyWars author James Stewart spoke in the morning; At the close of the conference later today, outgoing Pearson Education ceo Peter Jovanovich is scheduled to speak instead of invited speaker Karl Rove.) Due to over-stressed multi-tasking and quest for wireless access, also please excuse what are […]
Lunch for Wednesday, March 2
Schedule Note I’ll be at the AAP meeting all day tomorrow, multi-tasking away; Lunch will be served at some point, but there’s no telling exactly when. Perseus Drops Harper Perseus will no longer distribute its books through HarperCollins, beginning September 1 in the US, and January 1 in Canada. In an uncharacteristic fashion that we’ll leave you to fully interpret on your own, the change was announced late yesterday by Harper, though Perseus has not finalized their news plans yet. (Harper spokesman Lisa Herling explains their quick release saying, “The deal has been terminated and people have been calling us […]
Lunch for Tuesday, March 1
Von Mehren to Boost Random Trade Paper; Ebershoff Becomes Editor-at-Large Jane von Mehren is leaving her post as editor-in-chief and associate publisher of Penguin to take the new position of publisher, trade paperbacks at the Random House publishing group. Starting March 23, she will oversee lines from Ballantine, Modern Library and Random House, and will also acquire hardcovers. Group president Gina Centrello says the hire signals a desire “to expand our share of the trade paperback market.” David Ebershoff, who was publishing director for RH trade paperbacks and the Modern Library, is becoming an editor-at-large, “a position he requested in […]