Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing president Jonathan Karp announced Monday that Touchstone will be eliminated at the end of the year, with its titles for 2019 and beyond reassigned to the Atria and Gallery lists. That decision was made in the wake of Susan Moldow’s forthcoming retirement. “Touchstone’s front list frequently overlaps with our other adult publishers, particularly Atria and Gallery Books,” Karp writes, “and I believe that going forward we will be best served by integrating Touchstone’s talented staff within these imprints.” Starting in January, executive editor Matthew Benjamin, associate editor Kaitlin Olson, executive editor Trish Todd will move to […]
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People, Etc.
Erwin Koning will join HarperCollins Holland as publisher/editorial manager on December 1, responsible for the overall trade publishing program for HarperCollins Holland. He previously held positions as editor, commissioning editor, and publisher, at Meulenhoff Boekerij and Bruna. Koning succeeds Martine Koelemeijer, who served as interim publisher/editorial manager since May 2018. Miranda Martin joined the Columbia University Press as editor for life and physical sciences at the beginning of October, taking over from Patrick Fitzgerald, who retired in June. She was assistant editor for the linguistics list and assisted on the life sciences list at the University of Chicago Press. In […]
People, Etc.
Tara Parsons will join the Harper One Group on October 29 in the new role of associate publisher for Amistad, Harper Español, and the international fiction program, for which she will also acquire, reporting to Judith Curr. She has been editor-in-chief at Touchstone (where she reported to the soon-retiring Susan Moldow). M’Bilia Meekers joins the University of Washington Press team as publicity manager on Monday. She was publicist and copywriter at LSU Press. Also starting next week is Julie Fergus, exhibits and direct marketing manager. She was most recently associate marketing manager at Routledge, managing a list of social sciences […]
People, Etc.: Moldow to Retire
Susan Moldow, president of Scribner Publishing Group and publisher of Touchstone, is retiring at the end of the year. She has been with Simon & Schuster since 1994, shortly after the Macmillan acquisition. CEO Carolyn Reidy notes, “Her first order of business was to rationalize and reorganize a collection of three disparate adult imprints-Charles Scribner’s Sons, Macmillan and Atheneum-and forge them together as one: Scribner, a single powerful brand that at once acknowledged and cherished the distinguished history and tradition of those diverse imprints, while also signaling a new and contemporary focus that would revitalize and move Scribner forward. And what […]
Anna Burns Wins Booker Prize
The Booker Prize was a solid win for independent publishers, going to Irish writer Anna Burns for her novel Milkman. Faber & Faber publishes her in the UK, and Graywolf had purchased rights recently. The US publisher originally had the book scheduled for fall 2019 publication, but has moved the release date up to December 11. Faber is going back to press for another 100,000 paperbacks in the UK based on strong bookseller demand, after having sold a modest 2,000 hardcovers and 3,500 paperbacks so far. Chairman of the judges Kwame Anthony Appiah said of the novel, “None of us has ever […]
AAP Reports A Good August
The AAP reported monthly StatShot statistics compiled from 1,080 reporting publishers for August. Trade sales of $643.8 million were up $35.6 million compared to a year ago, up 5.9 percent. Adult sales rose by $22.7 million, as children’s and young adult sales were up by $12.9 million. On the consumer side, digital audio continued its brisk gains, at $36.2 million — compared to $24.9 million a year ago — and ebook sales were flat at $88.7 million