With 58 votes tabulated we’re ready to stop counting and present the final and ultimate (despite some newcomers) aggregation of selective “best of 2018” book lists from all over — including major publications of all kinds, but also retailer and library selections, major award nominees, and more. This year the top books were out of step with the major awards (unlike last year, when Booker winner George Saunders had our No. 1 book, or the 2016, when Colson Whitehead took multiple honors). Giller winner Washington Black was the most decorated and nominated title on this year’s overall top 10. Fifteen […]
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Jennifer Barth has been promoted to senior vice president, Harper. At Simon & Schuster Children’s Rebecca Vitkus has been promoted to production editor. Lisa Lauria has joined as editor for Simon Spotlight; she was most recently in the marketing and advertising department at Toys ‘R Us. Cassie Malmo has joined as publicity manager; she was most recently senior publicist at Disney Publishing Worldwide. Lauren Carr will join as publicist; she was most recently publicist at Bonnier Publishing. Annika Voss has joined as digital and social marketing coordinator; she was most recently marketing operations assistant at Scholastic. John Butman is joining Kneerim & Williams as an affiliated agent. He “has been involved in the creation of more […]
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Penguin Random House chief human resources officer Frank Steinert will leave the company after the first quarter in 2019. CEO Markus Dohle writes that Steinert “contributed passionately and immensely to our company by improving and strengthening our services for the most central part of our business: our employees.” Paige McInerney is promoted to the new position of evp, director of human resources for Penguin Random House US, reporting to Madeline McIntosh, and will join the US board. She has been with the company since 1991, when she started to Putnam Berkley. Dohle writes that he “will directly oversee the most […]
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Marian Wood, vice president and publisher of Marian Wood Books, will retire at the end of the year. She has been with Putnam since 1999. Ivan Held president of Putnam, Berkley, and Dutton wrote in a memo to staff, “While her list of writers is a tribute to her acumen as an editor, each of her books has received the skill and passion a good book deserves. As she has been known to say, ‘There is no reason to publish a book you don’t love. If you take that path, you do damage to the house, to the writer, and […]
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Tin House Magazine will shut down after its 20th anniversary issue is released in June 2019. Tin House Books and Tin House Workshop will continue, and new original fiction, nonfiction, and poetry will be published at tinhouse.com. Co-founder and editor of the magazine Rob Spillman will be leaving to move on to “new adventures.” Publisher and editor-in-chief Win McCormack said the decision was made “given the current costs of producing a print literary magazine” and thanked Spillman and founding editors Elissa Schappell and Holly MacArthur, as well as the rest of the staff “for their part in creating a vital, […]
Progress: Breaking Out the Very Best of the Best of 2018 Fiction and Nonfiction
Now that we’re getting into mid-December we can break out our signature aggregation of “best books of 2018” lists from all over into distinct Top 10s for fiction and nonfiction. (We’ll return closer to the holidays with the final very best of the best of list.) None of the preliminary top 10 has fallen away yet, which is a little unusual, and the top fiction (There There) and nonfiction (Educated) titles are both pulling away and all but guaranteed to lead their categories on the final list. Beyond those two titles, all of the other contenders are tightly packed, however. […]