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, […]
Distribution
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 […]
People, Etc.
Cliff Guren is leaving Bluefire, where he was vp, business development, to relaunch his consulting business Syntopical. Bluefire founder and ceo Micah Bowers said in the announcement: “Over the past five years I have had the pleasure of working with Cliff as we’ve successfully grown our software licensing business…. Cliff has done a fabulous job for us and we hope to find opportunities to work together in the years to come.” Coming soon from Bluefire is their Cloudshelf family of EPUB 3 reader applications and distribution services that will enable businesses and institutions to “deploy digital private libraries and subscription services to their constituent […]
People, Etc.
At Atria, Ariele Fredman has been promoted to assistant director of publicity; Kathryn Santora has been promoted to senior publicist; Tory Lowy moves up to publicist; and Emily Bamford is now associate publicist. The Texas Book Festival has hired Julie Wernersbach as literary director, starting later this month. She has been marketing director at BookPeople for the past five years. Tammy Brown joins the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators as director, community marketing and engagement, based in Los Angeles, starting March 1. Bonnie Bader work for the organization as a consultant, with the title of publishing advisor, based in New York. Kat Meyer recently joined the Book Industry Study […]
People, Etc.
Chris Lupo has joined Chernin Entertainment as the company’s book scout, based in New York, reporting to the head of film and television. Previously he was a senior literary scout at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates. At Random House Children’s, Jennifer Moreno has been promoted to production manager; Natalia Dextre moves up to associate production manager; Thomas Marshall has joined as production manager, moving over from the Penguin Random House Audio Group; and production associate Alice Rahaeauser will now work with the Licensed team, newly reporting to Patty Collins. Lithub.com announced a new group of contributors to the site, including: Manager […]
People, Etc.
Former BEA director of education Mark Dressler died December 23 from cancer. Dressler also programmed sessions for the Frankfurt Book Fair, and was co-owner of a wine shop in his home of Traverse City, MI. USA Today named Girl on the Train author Paula Hawkins as their “author of the year.” They write: “Before 2015, no one had heard of Hawkins, 43, who previously wrote chick lit under the pseudonym Amy Silver. Then Train hurtled into bookstores on Jan. 13 and immediately clicked with readers desperate for the next Gone Girl.” Riverhead has sold over 4 million units in the US. But it […]