Borders continues the tradition of bolstering their executive team with people from outside of publishing. They have hired Arthur Keeney as svp of marketing, starting at the end of June, reporting to Anne Kubek. He was general manager for eight years at Harold Friedman, Inc., a Pennsylvania-based grocery store chain, and previously worked with Borders ceo Ron Marshall at grocer Nash Finch. Among the areas he will oversee is Borders.com, where he will run a search “for a new leader at the vice president level.” Rich Fahle is moving from that role to the new position of vp creative, outreach […]
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Publisher of Sweden’s Nicotext Fredrik Colting has now admitted that he wrote 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye and invented the pseudonym JD California. (A photo that ran in the Telegraph depicted a friend of Colting’s who is an actor.) Colting claims not to have understood he was echoing Salinger’s name with his pseudonym: “Somehow, John David California sounded like JD. I didn’t think about that actually. I just thought it sounded cool. Of course afterwards, I see the resemblance.” He has also backed off of his fiery language about the suit and now claims, “I’ve never said this […]
One Bookseller's Best BEA Ever
Bookseller Jessica Stockton Bagnulo–who blogs as The Written Nerd and is co-owner of the new bookstore-to-be, Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn, had a great BEA and isn’t afraid to detail why. (Side note: it makes you think there should be something special at the show to make it easier for new booksellers to be identified and findable by publishers….)Written Nerd
BEA Wrapup: The Forces of Contradiction
Enough ink has been spilled and will be spilled here and elsewhere about the big stories of BEA – the decreased attendance, the absence of certain major publishers on the show floor, the call for new ventures, all things e-book. But if there’s one big takeaway from this year’s convention, it’s that, at least to my mind, it was all about contradictory forces. Yesterday was the last Sunday of BEA, and yet most everyone I spoke with found it to be the most relaxing and enjoyable day of the show – probably because there were no expectations, smaller crowds and […]
BEA: The Sequel
Yesterday marked the last time Book Expo expects to convene on a Sunday and by the sparse activity in the aisles (aside from packing up) very few will miss the third day when the show moves to weekdays next year and only two days of exhibition. With a big decline in paid exhibitor space and expectations of smaller crowds, show management appears to have set the expectations bar low enough that many attendees and companies ended up pleasantly surprised by the activity. The AP calls its “a low-budget, low-celebrity convention, with fewer parties and fewer advanced copies of books than […]
Secret Publishers Cabal on GBS Settlement in Javits Basement (Not)
On Friday, at the invitation of the AAP and Google I moderated a panel discussion with John Sargent from Macmillan and Richard Sarnoff from Bertelsmann that had the modest and focused goal of illuminating for publishers some of the basics of the proposed settlement of the Google Book Search lawsuits. The session was strictly limited to publishers only, which was apparently just the stimulus to make a number of people (mostly press) want to attend, only to get turned away at the door. Sargent’s opening statement addressed head-on the question of what will happen if the settlement is not approved […]