Philip Rappaport has joined Open Road as senior editor, focusing on nonfiction and serving as editorial liaison for Open Road’s publishing partners. Most recently he was executive editor at McClelland & Stewart, and worked at Bantam Dell and the Free Press. Michael Szczerban has been promoted to editor at the Simon & Schuster adult trade imprint. As you may have noticed, Leslie Kaufman is covering books and publishing for the New York Times while Julie Bosman is on maternity leave. Recently she has been writing obituaries and prior to that Kaufman covered environmental issues for the paper. The AAP has […]
Random House to Take Complete Ownership of Random House Mondadori
Another piece of speculation from when the Penguin Random House merger was coming together has also been confirmed: Random House will purchase Mondadori’s fifty percent share in their Spanish and Latin American book publishing joint venture, Random House Mondadori. Random House is paying 54.5 million euros ($70.01 million), Reuters reports, and Mondadori is booking a capital gain of just 2.5 million euros on the transaction. Like the larger Penguin merger, the Mondadori buyout is subject to approval by Spanish antitrust authorities, and “is expected to close before year-end.” We were told by a company spokesperson the buyout was “long in […]
People, Etc.
Harmony Books, which has been all but dormant on the acquisitions front for over two years, since the launch of Crown Archetype, is now the focus of what spokesperson David Drake calls “an effort to revitalize the Harmony brand.” The imprint has been given dedicated editorial staff again and aims to expand its list starting in spring 2013 to include health, diet, relationships, and self-improvement titles with a mission of “guiding readers to become their best selves, both inside and out.” Former Crown executive editor Heather Jackson is re-joining the company as consulting editor-at-large for Harmony, responsible for identifying emerging […]
Storm Updates: Downtown Houses (Mostly) Operational; National Book Awards Events Still On Track
The restoration of the bulk of New York City’s subway service and some commuter rails means much of the book trade in New York has resumed regular operations (though PATH service remains suspended, continuing the disruption in New Jersey). Macmillan, which closed all of last week while power was out in lower Manhattan, is now open, with systems, email, phone lines, and distribution centers back up. In a note to staff, ceo John Sargent said “[we] ask you all to work diligently to catch up. We will have some infrastructure problems, some systems problems, and some transportation problems. Please be […]
A Look Back At Bertelsmann’s Last Big Merger
Once Hurricane Sandy stops being the foremost story no doubt trade publishing will return to speculation about the pending deal to create Penguin Random House. With government approval required in multiple territories (and particularly complex negotiations in places where Penguin faces litigation or investigation related to the adoption of the agency model), we thought it might be instructive to revisit the last major trade publishing merger. It was March 1998 when Bertelsmann announced their $1.4 billion deal to acquire Random House and merge it with their trade division, Bantam Doubleday Dell. News of that deal also came as a surprise […]
Awards: Coll Wins FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book Award; PW Best Books of the Year
Steve Coll has won the FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award for PRIVATE EMPIRE: Exxon Mobil and American Power (Penguin Press). Publishers Weekly announced their picks for the 100 best books adult books (and 40 top children’s books) of 2012. Here is their top 10 list: Building Stories, by Chris Ware (Pantheon) Bring Up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel (Holt) The Round House, by Louise Erdrich (Harper) Happiness Is a Chemical in the Brain, by Lucia Perillo (Norton) The Devil in Silver, by Victor LaValle (Spiegel & Grau) Detroit City Is the Place to Be: The Afterlife of an […]