Dan Ambrosio has joined Da Capo Books as a senior editor. He was at Wiley for the last four years, and has worked at Vigliano Associates and Warner Books. Deborah Ritchken has joined the Marsal Lyon Literary Agency, working primarily in the areas of food, design and entertaining; pop culture; women’s issues; biography; and current events. She was with The Castiglia Agency. Random House is inviting the public to buy tickets (at $25 each, including breakfast and lunch) to an “open house” at their headquarters building in New York on November 2. The full-day event promises “access to upcoming titles before they’re […]
Authors
People: Mo Yan Wins Nobel
The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded Thursday morning to Chinese writer Mo Yan, with the citation praising him for his “hallucinatory realism” that “merges folk tales, history and the contemporary.” Mo, a pseudonym for Guan Moye, is one of China’s best-selling (and most pirated) authors in the country, and his work, according to the Swedish Academy, “created a world reminiscent in its complexity of those in the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez, at the same time finding a departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition.” Mo was said to be “overjoyed and terrified” […]
People: Digital Hires at Harper
HarperCollins has hired Adrianna Dufay and Brian Perrin, both serving as executive director, digital product development, reporting to Carrie Bloxson. They will “help conceptualize and develop new digital platforms and products for individual genres and titles,” across apps, e-books, social gaming, and video products, along with helping to harness “emerging product technology and capabilities in support of the imprints.” Dufay has been at JPMorgan Chase and AOL; she will work with Avon, William Morrow, Morrow trade paperbacks, Voyager, and HarperOne. Perrin was part of the start-up team at NBC Publishing most recently and will work with Amistad, Ecco, Harper, Harper […]
People, Awards, Etc.
Editorial director of Bloomsbury Children’s UK Emma Matthewson will join Hot Key Books at a date “to be confirmed” as editor-at-large for their recently launched fiction line for 9- to 19 year-olds. Matthewson has been at Bloomsbury for the 15 years; the move reunites her with Sarah Odedina, who was publishing director of Bloomsbury Children’s before moving to Bonnier to start up Hot Key Books. At Basic Books, TJ Kelleher has been promoted to senior executive editor, Tisse Takagi and Alex Littlefield move up to editor, and Katy O’Donnell has been promoted to assistant editor. Bloomsbury cfo Robert Marsh, who came to the […]
Initiatives: Pratchett Exploits His Own Multimedia Rights; S&S Seeks to License Author Videos
Author of the Discworld series (and many others) Terry Pratchett has launched a multimedia production company that holds and will exploit exclusive rights to his work for film, TV, merchandising and digital media. Called Narrativia, the company is led by managing director Rod Brown. A writer, director and producer of commercial TV for over two decades, Brown produced the adaptation of Pratchett’s Hogfather and The Color of Magic. The announcement indicates that they company “is already working on a number of Pratchett-related TV and film projects with high profile production partners and scriptwriters.” Among Simon & Schuster‘s new offerings at […]
Penguin Explains Author Lawsuits
On Friday afternoon, Penguin issued to us a statement regarding the reported dozen separate lawsuits seeking to recover advances paid to authors the publishers says did not submit manuscripts: “Penguin invests in, nurtures and develops authors who write books that we publish and bring to readers. It devalues the hard work of the vast majority of our authors, and is unfair to our readers, if a few individuals can keep tens of thousands of dollars in advances without ever delivering anything to the publisher. For this reason, Penguin is asking these authors to repay the money they received for work […]