Thomas LeBien will join Simon & Schuster as vp, senior editor, specializing in history and non-fiction. He was most recently at FSG, where he was publisher of the Hill & Wang and Scientific American imprints. LeBien starts at S&S on December 21 Rachel Vogel will join Mary Evans Inc. as foreign rights director and literary agent, effective November 28th, where she’ll continue to build her list of literary and upmarket fiction, narrative nonfiction and memoir. She has previously held positions at Movable Type, Lippincott Massie McQuilkin, and Maria Campbell Associates. Parhul Segal has joined NPR as digital associate editor for […]
S&S Shifts Sales & Marketing Focus To Digital, Cuts Sales Positions
Simon & Schuster is creating a dedicated digital sales team as well as a new retail sales force comprised of national accounts, field sales and telemarketing. The company is also pursuing what ceo Carolyn Reidy calls an “even greater focus on marketing, at both the imprint and the corporate level.” New marketing staff will be added to each of the company’s imprints, and the children’s marketing team will move back to the children’s division. Liz Perl will now report directly to Reidy, and the company’s digital group under Ellie Hirschhorn will add “responsibility for our corporate social media efforts, and […]
RLJ Equity Partners Acquires Parent Company of LJ, SLJ and Horn Book
Media Source Inc., the parent company of Library Journal, School Library Journal, The Horn Book and the Junior Library Guild, was sold to RLJ Equity Partners, one of the hedge funds created by Black Entertainment Television founder Robert L. Johnson. 21st Century Group, LLC and New Canaan Funding Mezzanine, LLC also took part in the deal, for which terms were not disclosed. LJ and SLJ had been acquired by Media Source in early 2010; Media Source was in turn previously owned by Riverside Company, which bought them in 2007. Media Source had been on the block for a while, according […]
People: Edugyan Wins Giller, and More
HALF BLOOD BLUES by Esi Edugyan (Thomas Allen) has won the 2011 Giller Prize, less than a year after Edugyan’s original publisher Key Porter Books suffered from financial difficulties that led to its bankruptcy this fall. There are currently 23,000 copies of the book in print in Canada and Thomas Allen publisher Thomas Crean told Quill & Quire “Tomorrow morning we’re going to be pushing the button again…I don’t quite know what the number is going to be, but it’s going to be upwards of 20,000.” In the UK, Sam Humphreys will join Michael Joseph as publisher at the end […]
People, Etc.
At Random House, Jeff Weber has been promoted to vp, director, online and digital sales. Also at Random House Digital, Susan Livingston has been promoted to vp, strategic business planning and Randi Rosenkranz has been promoted to vp, digital development. Executive vp and managing director of Egmont USA Douglas Pocock is leaving the company to return to England for family reasons. Cally Poplak, managing director of Egmont Press, has taken over management of the U.S. business from London. Andrew Savikas has been named ceo of Safari Books online. He spent the past five years as program chair for O’Reilly’s Tools […]
Harbach Tops Amazon’s Best Books List of 2011
Amazon named their Top Ten Books of 2011, with Chad Harbach’s debut novel THE ART OF FIELDING as their No. 1 pick. The etailer’s ever-expanding “Best of” lists now include breakouts for over 20 different categories, from Art & Photography to Teens. In 15 of those categories they have separate Kindle and print-editions lists. Also new for this year is a list of Top 10 Kindle Singles. Interestingly, as best we can tell, nearly all of the various selections for the year’s best books were issued by “legacy publishers.” 1. The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach (Little, Brown) 2. […]