Devin Kirk will join Macmillan on April 14 as vp, international sales and marketing, succeeding Judy Sisko, who is retiring next month after more than 46 years in publishing and 22 years at Macmillan. Kirk was previously senior director, international sales for Penguin Random House. At Penguin Random House, Kim Shannon has been appointed to newly created position of vp, director, adult retail sales, Random House. Adult retail sales at Penguin continue to be overseen by John Lawton and Norman Lidofsky. At Sterling Lord Literistic, Caitlin McDonald and Mary Krienke have been promoted to associate agents, while Nadyne Pike moves […]
Book Fairs
People: Robinson Leads Authors Guild, and More
The Authors Guild has elected novelist Roxana Robinson as their new president, taking over from Scott Turow after four years of service. She is joined by Judy Blume, Richard Russo, and James Shapiro as co-vice presidents. CJ Lyons joined the Guild’s executive Council. With her addition, the organization notes, “we now have our first self-published author on our board.” On the lawsuits against Google and HathiTrust pursued aggressively during his tenure, Turow said, “Groundbreaking lawsuits are most often decided in higher courts. We know we were right to bring these cases, and we expect to prevail at the end of […]
BEA Names This Year’s Buzz Book Panels
Book Expo America announced the books that will featured at this year’s convention on the three Buzz Books panels. The adult panel features two works of nonfiction this year, and three debuts (from Thomas, Burton and Walsh). Adult Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel (Knopf) We Are Not Ourselves, by Matthew Thomas (S&S) The Miniaturist, by Jessie Burton (Ecco) On Immunity: An Inoculation, by Eula Biss (Graywolf Press) My Sunshine Away, by M.O. Walsh (Amy Einhorn Books) Neverhome, by Laird Hunt (Little, Brown) The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for […]
Briefs: WBN Adds Twelve Years A Slave, 100 Million Fifty Shades, and More
World Book Night announced that special editions of Solomon Northup’s public domain book Twelve Years a Slave will be given free to schools for distribution as part of World Book Night on April 23. Executive director Carl Lennertz notes, “One third of our half million free books each year go into underfunded rural and urban high schools, and when Dover Publications offered to work with us on this, we jumped at the chance.” In other announcements, Vintage announced that the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy has sold 100 million units worldwide. Vintage itself has sold over 45 million units in the […]
Another Successful Winter Institute
The ABA’s 9th annual Winter Institute in Seattle last week once again drew a sellout crowd of more than 500 enthusiastic booksellers, with almost 40 percent of attendees — and 60 bookstores — present for the first time. Those independent booksellers had reason for optimism, as ceo Oren Teicher said at the first of two rep picks’ luncheons on Wednesday. After showing an 8 percent gain in sales at ABA stores in 2012, “we have held on to virtually all of those gains in 2013,” Teicher noted. (In a follow-up email, Teicher explained he kept his statistics “somewhat vague overall” […]
Successful Failure
Last week’s Digital Book World conference did a lot to bridge the gap between start-ups from outside the publishing business and innovators within the industry, and one of the more inspiring presentations came from Sourcebooks ceo Dominique Raccah in one of the closing sessions. Her slides on Rethinking Failure: Finding The Opportunities In Our Challenges are available online now. “We have to rethink our whole view on failure,” Raccah said. “It is hurting us.” The essence of her presentation was to suggest that we stop talking about failure when trying new things, and stick to discussing “experiments and results.” (When we […]