Midas Public Relations CEO Jacks Thomas will join Reed Exhibitions UK in January as senior exhibition director for the London Book Fair. LBF has been a Midas client for 10 years, and will remain so in the future. Kelly Welsh will join Putnam and Amy Einhorn Books as senior publicity manager on December 3. Previously she was publicity manager at Simon & Schuster’s trade imprint. Author and motivational speaker Hilary Hinton “Zig” Ziglar, 86, died on Wednesday. Best known for his 1975 book SEE YOU AT THE TOP, the WSJ notes he “preached in the tradition of American self-help that stretched back […]
Awards
People, Etc.
The literary director of Albert Bonniers Forlag in Sweden Jonas Axelsson has elected to step down, effective immediately. Associate publishing director of Bonnier Group’s trade publishing division Jesper Monthan will take over on aa temporary basis while a search is conducted. Axelsson has also resigned from his other responsibilities within the Bonnier Group, including leading the Bonnier Group Agency. Frank Berrios has been promoted to editor for the Random House Children’s and Golden Books licensed publishing group, where Courtney Carbone has moved up to assistant editor. The Costa Awards shortlists were announced across five categories. Booker winner Hilary Mantel is […]
Favorites Erdrich, Boo, Win National Book Awards
The National Book Awards were presented Wednesday evening at Cipriani Wall Street. In keeping with the awards’ recognition of writers with a broad audience and larger reach, favorites Louise Erdrich and Katherine Boo won in the fiction and nonfiction categories. Accepting the nonfiction award for Behind The Beautiful Forevers, Boo said that if the prize were to mean anything, “it is that small stories in so-called hidden places matter because they implicate and complicate what we consider to be the larger story, which is the story of people who do […]
A Look At Tonight’s National Book Award Field
Predicting (or speculating on) who will win tonight’s National Book Awards is harder than usual, as the awards themselves are headed towards a process that will have broader resonance with readers. In past years, particularly for fiction, commercial success was often a deficit more than an advantage, but that may no longer apply. Among the fiction nominees, Nielsen Bookscan print sales data confirms Junot Diaz’s book as the most successful title in the marketplace, though a win for Diaz would make him the first person to win for a book of stories since Andrea Barrett’s 1996 award for Ship Fever and […]
People, Awards, Etc.
At Abrams, publisher Steve Tager takes on the new role of chief marketing and business development officer, focused on driving new business initiatives, including exploiting company’s digital assets. The marketing and publicity departments will also report to him. Deborah Aaronson takes over as vp, publisher for the adult trade group. She has been with the company since 2000. Elisa Urbanelli returns to the company as associate publisher for the adult group, also acquiring in categories including art and museum publications. She was previously a managing editor for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and most recently was a freelance […]
World Book Night Picks; Ferrari’s Wins Top French Prize
World Book Night has announced the 30 titles they will give away in the US and the 20 titles they will give away in the UK next April 23. The honorary national chairs in the US are authors Ann Patchett and James Patterson. US executive director Carl Lennertz notes in the announcement: “This isn’t a best-books-of-all-time list; these are contemporary or classic books that appeal to a wide range of new readers. We looked for diversity and variety in all things: subject matter, age level, gender, as well as ethnic and geographic considerations. Last year’s givers also got to nominate books…. And we thank […]