The Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency announced last week at the agency’s 35th anniversary celebration that Jennifer Weltz will succeed Jean Naggar as president of the agency, with Naggar moving to the new position of chair. Naggar noted that her daughter Weltz, who was named partner in 2004 and later vice president, “has been president in all but name these past few years” and that “her incisive intelligence, energy, marketing acumen, love of books, ready humor, and editorial flair have combined to build and lead JVNLA confidently into a future all of us here are reaching to identify.” Director of […]
Bookstores
Indies Pick Spring Debuts
The ABA has announced the 20 titles for their Spring 2014 Indies Introduce New Voices program. The list includes new NBF 5-Under-35 honoree Molly Antopol. Adult Fiction The Un-Americans, by Molly Antopol (Norton) The Kept, by James Scott (Harper) The Wives of Los Alamos, by Tarashea Nesbit (Bloomsbury) Shotgun Lovesongs, by Nickolas Butler (Thomas Dunne Books) Point of Direction, by Rachel Weaver (IG Publishing) Faces in the Crowd, by Valeria Luiselli (Coffee House Press) Adult Nonfiction If Only You People Could Follow Directions, by Jessica Hendry Nelson (Counterpoint) Badluck Way: A Year on the Ragged Edge of the West, by […]
People, Etc.
Don Sedgwick is stepping down as chairman, director, and shareholder in the Transatlantic Agency after fifteen years. He explains in a statement that “most of my days are now taken up as executive director of the new MFA in Creative Nonfiction at the University of King’s College (Halifax). I need to ensure that these MFA students are given independent and unbiased advice about how to get their work published.” Louise Fury is joining The Bent Agency as an agent in their New York office. She represents young adult, new adult,romance, commercial fiction, pop culture and select nonfiction. Fury was previously at […]
Chicago Court Dismisses PIN Code Skimming Lawsuit Against Barnes & Noble
A federal court in Chicago dismissed a lawsuit filed against Barnes & Noble in October 2012 over the skimming of customer PIN codes from credit-card readers at stores in New York, California and seven other states, Bloomberg reports. The original suit, filed by Chicago customer Elizabeth Nowak and later consolidated with three other complaints for class-action seeking status, alleged that BN, by failing to disclose the PIN pad scam to customers for six weeks, was in “breach of an implied contract to protect that information and violation of Illinois consumer fraud laws” and that the company’s “security failures enabled the […]
Briefs
Dan Crissman has been promoted to senior editor at The Overlook Press. Amy Hatvany‘s OUTSIDE THE LINES is Costco’s “Pennie’s Pick” for September. The Northern and Southern California Independent Bookseller’s Associations have come to the end of their IndieGoGo fundraising campaign for the planned California Bookstore Day — to be convened Saturday May 3, 2014. While they raised less than half the stated funding goal, their page promises that “CBD is definitely happening!”
People, Etc.
Having overseen McGraw-Hill Education during its spinoff from McGraw-Hill to its standalone status as a private company owned by Apollo Global Management, ceo Lloyd G. “Buzz” Waterhouse, 61, will retire by the end of the year. He’s been in the post only since June 2012. Spokesman Daniel Sieger told the WSJ Waterhouse is stepping down for “a combination of personal and professional reasons,” but will remain on the board. A search is underway for a replacement. On Monday Crown “inadvertently” fed out catalog data indicating a May 6, 2014 pub date for former Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner‘s memoir and a working title […]