In advance of the sale of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s trade division, senior executive editor Rick Wolff recently accepted a voluntary buyout package, and he will leave HMH in mid-December. Wolff, “who has no plans to retire, was a minor league baseball player in the Detroit Tigers organization before entering book publishing.” At Harper Christian and Harper Focu, Jerri Helm was promoted to vp of digital marketing and analytics, continuing to lead the marketing operations team while also assuming responsibility for the corporate analytics team. Bookselling Politics and Prose is looking to change the paradigm around author events, from free promotion […]
Free
National Book Awards: Yu Wins Fiction, Along With Les Payne and Tamara Payne, and More
At the 71st National Book Awards on Wednesday evening, Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown (Pantheon) won the fiction prize. Roxane Gay presented the award, noting, “This has been an impossible year in almost every way. We are dealing with both a pandemic and a political climate that is terrifying and absurd.” Yu, who said he had not prepared a speech because he was so sure he would not win, spoke briefly, saying “I can’t feel anything in my body right now” and “I’m going to go melt into a puddle.” (Afterwards on Twitter, Yu remarked: “That feeling when you win a […]
Obama’s A Promised Land Sets PRH Opening Day Sales Record
Penguin Random House announced Wednesday that Barack Obama’s A PROMISED LAND sold over than 887,000 units (including pre-orders_ in all formats and editions in the US and Canada on the first day of publication. That comprises “the largest first-day sales total for any book ever published” by the company. Two years ago, Michelle Obama’s book BECOMING sold over 725,000 units in its first day on sale, moving 1.4 million units in the first week on sale. In July, Simon & Schuster said they had set their own “company record” for opening day sales in the US when Mary Trump’s Too […]
People, Etc.
Annysa Polanco has been promoted to director, diversity, equity & inclusion at Penguin Random House. In the coming year, the company will add “more fully-dedicated positions” in diversity, equity & inclusions roles across the divisions, including a new “board-level DE&I leadership position” that will report directly to PRH US ceo Madeline McIntosh. Polanco will report to that new executive once the role is filled. Michael DeFazio had been promoted to vice president & executive director, production planning, analytics, and paper purchasing, Penguin Random House. Film/TV Production outfit The Mazur Kaplan Company — run by bookseller Mitchell Kaplan and producer Paula […]
New Books Publishing November 17
Yes, Barack Obama’s memoir publishes today, but it is joined by a wealth of high-profile new releases. There are also memoirs and personal essays from Rachel Bloom, Cazzie David, Ree Drummond, Michael J. Fox, Dolly Parton — and new fiction from David Baldacci, Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke, Brandon Sanderson and Danielle Steel, plus Rupi Kaur’s third collection of poetry, and still more. The week will include the National Book Awards on Wednesday night and the Booker Prize selection on Thursday. With the NYT about to publishing their lists of 100 Notable Books and the top 10 books of […]
People, Etc.
David Ebershoff will rejoin Random House as vice president and executive editor starting January 4. Though he reports to Andy Ward, Ebershoff “will be focusing on the Hogarth list,” while also acquiring for the Random House list. Ebersoff was previously executive editor at Random House for 20 years until 2015. At the Simon & Schuster imprint, Priscilla Painton has been promoted to vp, editorial director for nonfiction program. Reporting to publisher Dana Canedy, Painton “will work with our editors to expand, diversify, and strengthen our already stellar nonfiction list.” Hannah Phillips, Kevin Reilly, Gwen Hawkes, Alice Pfeifer, Sallie Lotz, and […]