Lauren Lauzon has been promoted to marketing associate at William Morrow. At Coffee House Press, Nica Carrillo has been promoted to marketing and sales manager. Mandy Medley has been promoted to publicity director. In Italy, Francesco Anzelmo has been promoted to publishing director of the Mondadori flagship imprint. Awards John Irving has won the 2018 Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, honoring “writers whose works use the power of literature to foster peace, social justice, and global understanding.” The award will be presented at Dayton Literary Peace Prize gala on October 28. Imprints Joel Fotinos‘s new line will be called […]
People: Smith Exits Bonnier Zaffre; Transatlantic Agency Expands into US
Mark Smith is stepping down as ceo of Bonnier Zaffre at the end of July and has sold his equity stake. Smith has been with the company since 2014. While Bonnier looks for a successor, executive director of adult publishing Kate Parkin, executive director of children’s publishing Jane Harris, and executive director of sales and marketing James Horobin will fill in, reporting to Bonnier Publishing UK ceo Perminder Mann. Smith said, “The last three and a half years at Bonnier Zaffre, working with the brilliant team in Marylebone to build a commercial fiction company that covers both children’s and adult, has been […]
KKR Acquires RBmedia
Investment firm KKR has acquired audiobook powerhouse RBmedia (previously known as Recorded Books) from Shamrock Capital. The financial details of the sale were not disclosed, though as one of the largest private equity firms with assets under management of over $150 billion, KKR focuses on investments of scale. With a catalog of 35,000 published audiobook titles across multiple imprints, RBmedia calls itself the largest independent audiobook publisher in the world. They offer audio titles from multiple publishers to consumers through Audiobooks.com by subscription, and provide a broader catalog of digital content to libraries through the RBDigital platform. Tom MacIsaac, president […]
Picks: Another Barack Obama Reading List; August Library Reads
Barack Obama posted another summer reading list in advance of his trip to Africa. The list of mostly African authors includes: Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe A Grain of Wheat, by Ngugi wa Thiong’o Long Walk to Freedom, by Nelson Mandela Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie The Return, by Hisham Matar The World As It Is, by Ben Rhodes Separately, Vox by Christina Dalcher is the top pick for the August’s Library Reads list. Also on the list are Louise Candlish Our House and Kristan Higgins’s Good Luck with That, both excerpted in our Buzz Books 2018 Spring/Summer sampler and available to download now. The rest […]
People, Etc.
Longtime Washington Post Book World editor Ron Charles is transitioning into a “redefined job” at the paper. He writes: “No more editing! From now on, I just get to write about books for the paper. After assigning and editing reviews every day for more than 20 years, I feel like that old tiger finally released from his cage who just keeps walking back and forth where the bars used to be. . . . Friends tell me I’ll get the hang of it.” Succeeding Charles as Book World editor is Stephanie Merry, who was previously a culture reporter for the […]
People, Etc.
Haley Swanson has joined Harper and Harper Wave as assistant editor. She was an editorial assistant at Viking. KF Literary Scouting has been appointed YA and children’s scout for Record in Brazil and Urano in Spain and Latin America. Imprints Penguin Random House UK is launching a new imprint with English rapper Stormzy called #Merky Books. The imprint will be a partnership with William Heinemann, and publish two to three titles a year across fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. The first title will be Stormzy’s own book Rise Up, planned for this November. Susan Sandon, managing director of Cornerstone at Penguin Random House UK, said: “Stormzy is an artist […]