“We gather now at a time where the nature of digital change in publishing is, itself, changing,” co-chair Mike Shatzkin said in opening Digital Book World Wednesday morning, and the nature of that change was a recurring theme through the opening keynote sessions — most especially the notion that “the pace of change is slowing down, at least temporarily, but we’re nowhere near finished developing new best practices for publishers, retailers, or authors.” Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ceo Linda Zecher addressed the rate of change in the education market and, more pointedly, on how there can be more female chief executives in […]
People, Etc.: Franzen Interview to Open BEA
Book Expo America’s opening event will feature author Jonathan Franzen interviewed by Salon book critic Laura Miller, on May 27 at 12 PM (an hour before the show floor opens; this year the trade exhibition runs for two and a half days). This will be Franzen’s first event to discuss his new novel PURITY, which FSG will publish in September. The conversation will include “a discussion of the author’s writing [and] the important influences in his life” as well. Nonfiction publisher at Pan Macmillan Jon Butler is leaving the company at the end of the month to join Quercus as managing director, with current […]
Experiments and Optimism Rule the Day at Publishers Launch Kids
The overall message — or attitude — was pretty consistent throughout the day at a lively and informative Publishers Launch Kids conference kicking off Digital Book World on Tuesday. With a robust traditional market for children’s books of all kinds, “it’s a much more interesting place than it was a few years ago,” as Random House Children’s president and publisher Barbara Marcus put it. Previously, children’s publishers “looked at digital as an extension of what we were doing in print” and the results were not promising. Now, as Disney Worldwide publisher Suzanne Murphy agreed on the same panel, there’s an […]
Big Changes at Penguin Publishing Group: Tart Takes Over Viking As Ferraro Leaves, Putnam and Dutton Combine, Hudson Street & Gotham Close
Having taken over as president of newly-formed Penguin Publishing Group in September, Madeline McIntosh has moved quickly to reshape that group through “several major organizational alignments, leadership changes, and promotions.” McIntosh notes to staff in a lengthy memo that “wide-ranging” reorganization “was a lot to absorb, but I hope that you will value being able to see the total picture all at once. I am delighted that these changes will provide new opportunities for growth for so many of our existing colleagues, and that they will set us up perfectly to continue to provide the very best service to our authors and […]
Macmillan Signs Up For Subscription Test With Scribd, Oyster
Macmillan has made good on ceo John Sargent’s reluctant promise in his end-of-2014 letter to “test subscription” program. The company will make available 1,000 titles — including science fiction & fantasy novels by Elizabeth Bear, Orson Scott Card, and Ursula K. LeGuin, to novels and nonfiction by Michel Foucault, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Louis Menand — on both Scribd and Oyster‘s ebook subscription services. In his December letter to authors and agents, Sargent had written that they would focus on “backlist books, and mostly … titles that are not well represented at bricks and mortar retail stores.” Macmillan has already making ebooks available for sale on Scribd; […]
People, Etc.
Rachel Meier has been named to the newly created position of publishing manager for Crown, Crown Archetype, Hogarth, Broadway, Three Rivers Press, and Tim Duggan Books. Ami Webster McConnell has joined Howard Books as vp, editor in chief. Most recently she was senior acquisitions editor for fiction at Harper Christian and helped launch the fiction program at Thomas Nelson. Michael Eisenberg has joined the book publishing group at Highlights in the newly created role of director, book marketing, reporting to Jack Perry, after consulting with the company for the past five years. Previously he was svp, co-publisher of Farrar, Straus & Giroux […]