Sam Im has been promoted to director, digital strategy & business development at Random House Children’s. Adrienne Szpyrka has been promoted to editor at Sky Pony Press. Rachel Zugschwert has joined Sparkhouse Family as director of marketing. Previously, she was marketing manager at Consortium. In Amazon‘s continuing rollout of staffed “pickup locations” on college campuses, the company announced an agreement to open a facility at the University of Texas at Austin in summer 2016. (In January, they announced new locations for the University of Pennsylvania, University of California, Davis and the University of California, Berkeley. Obituary Former literary agent Ginger Barber, […]
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People, Etc.
Edward Benitez has joined HarperCollins’ Spanish language publishing program as senior acquisitions editor for Harper Espan͂ol, Grupo Nelson and Editorial Vida, reporting to Larry Downs and working out of the company’s offices in Nashville. Most recently, Benitez served as the director for US Spanish language sales for Penguin Random House. Richard Callison has been appointed director, international online & digital sales, Penguin Random House international sales and marketing. He previously was an associate publisher at Random House. Jade Yeung has joined little bee books as production coordinator. Previously she was a production associate at Norton. Courtney Miller-Callihan has opened her own […]
Corporate: Chegg Drops, KU In China, and the Barnes & Noble Prototype
Chegg‘s fourth quarter sales were down 19 percent to $68 million and below what analysts were expecting — and their forecast for Q1 and all of 2016 also shows sales declining, once again below analysts’ expectations, as the company continues its pivot to focus on student services and outsource textbook rentals to Ingram in exchange for commission revenue. Investors evacuated the stock on the news on Tuesday, sending shares down over 35 percent to their lowest point yet (dropping about $1.90 a share). Shares have rebounded some in Wednesday morning trading, regaining about 50 cents a share. China Daily reports […]
Briefs: Harper Pairs with Temple Hill, Final Days for St. Mark’s, and More
Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey’s film production company Temple Hill Entertainment has a new publishing agreement with HarperCollins in which the producers will “generate original ideas and opportunities for books and series,” that Harper will publish under the Temple Hill Publishing banner. Petersen Harris at Temple Hill will serve as their vp, publishing (he ran the Penguin Development Group before joining the production company in 2014, and is the son of Susan Petersen Kennedy and Bruce Harris), and the producers were represented by Writers House in the publishing deal. Temple Hill has produced adaptions of both YA (The Fault in Our Stars; Paper Towns, The […]
General Growth CEO “Clarifies” Amazon Comments In the Vaguest Way
CEO of mall operator General Growth Properties Sandeep Mathrani was forced to put out a statement Wednesday afternoon after generating a firestorm of media with his casual reference to Amazon’s “goal…as I understand” to open hundreds of physical bookstores. The funny part is that the statement is titled, “General Growth Properties CEO Sandeep Mathrani Clarifies Statement About Amazon,” while it actually clarifies nothing at all. It simply reiterates what already happened: “Mathrani has indicated that a statement he made concerning Amazon during GGP’s earnings conference call held on February 2, 2016, was not intended to represent Amazon’s plans.” Just as […]
General Growth CEO Casually Claims Amazon Wants to Open Hundreds of Bookstores
Mall owner General Growth Properties claims that Amazon is looking to open hundreds of brick-and-mortar bookstores. The remark came in the company’s earnings call with investors Tuesday afternoon. Answering a question about mall traffic, what CEO Sandeep Mathrani actually said was, “And just case in point, you’ve got Amazon opening brick-and-mortar bookstores and their goal is to open, as I understand, 300 to 400 bookstores — and it should sit back and say the last mile is all important,” which is why online retailers in general are expanding their physical store presence. Amazon declined to comment, as did a General […]