William Wood will join Barnes & Noble as chief information officer, reporting to ceo Ronald Boire. Wood previously served as cio at EZCORP. Boire said in the announcement: “We are thrilled to welcome Bill to Barnes & Noble and are excited to have someone with such broad experience in information technology join the team. Bill is a proven leader in this area and his appointment signals our continued commitment to being a leading omni-channel retailer.” At Penguin Children’s, Jocelyn Schmidt has been promoted to vp, associate publisher, reporting to new president Jen Loja. Schmidt was executive director of brand management. In […]
Favorite Books of 2015, From the News Editor
Our tally of the Best of the Best Books of 2015 already points to a consensus, and as it so happens, I, too, count Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff, and A Little Life by Hanya Yanigihara among my favorites for the year. These books are emblematic of major themes in my reading (as well as publishing zeitgeist): Between the World and Me crested the wave, then led subsequent ones, on the country’s lingering, unresolved issues of race and the urgency with which we must reckon with those issues. On the surface, Fates […]
People, Etc.
Elizabeth Schaefer will join Del Rey as senior editor on December 14. Previously she was an editor at Scholastic. Lindsay Walter-Greaney has joined Little, Brown Children’s as associate managing editor. She was most recently senior production editor at Scholastic. In Sweden, publisher Lind & Co. and literary agent Carina Brandt at Brandt New Agency have partnered on Stockholm Noir Agency, a new international literary agency focusing on Nordic crime and suspense novels, headed by Jenni Brunn (previously a project coordinator at Lind & Co.) As part of the joint venture, Stockholm Noir will represent Lind & Co.’s list. KF Literary Scouting […]
Strout Leads January Library Reads List
Elizabeth Strout‘s new novel My Name Is Lucy Barton is the No. 1 pick for the January Library Reads list. The list also includes the January No. 1 Indie Next Pick The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katrina Bivald, an excerpt of which you can start reading right now in Buzz Books 2015: Fall/Winter. The rest of the list features: Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue (Delacorte) Dean Koontz, Ashley Bell (Bantam) Helen Ellis, American Housewife (Doubleday) Bill Bryson, The Road to Little Dribbling (Doubleday) Sally Hepworth, The Things We Keep (St. Martin’s) Jane Cleland, Ornaments of Death (Minotaur) […]
Balcells Told VF None of The Buyout Offers Was Good Enough
Former FSG editor Paul Elie’s Vanity Fair article ostensibly about the publication history of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE also turns out to be the last published interview given by Carmen Balcells, seven weeks before her death earlier this fall. In it she explains in further detail why the “memorandum of understanding” between Balcells and the Wylie agency fell apart: “Balcells clearly trusted Wylie enough to have taken things that far. So why wasn’t the deal done? Because, Balcells said, she surmised that Wylie anticipated closing the office on the Diagonal in Barcelona and folding the Balcells […]
People
Miriam Altshuler will join DeFiore and Company on January 1. She has run her own agency for the past 21 years, working with authors including including Robb Forman Dew, Elizabeth Rosner, Maya Lang, Andrew Carroll, Marja Mills, Wednesday Martin, and the late Walter Dean Myers. Also joining DeFiore and Company is Reiko Davis, Altshuler’s associate for the last four years, where she will take on some new duties while continuing to develop her own list of clients. Altshuler said in the announcement: “After running my own agency for many years, I am excited to join a company where I will have […]