Longtime owner of The Strand bookstore Fred Bass, 89, died on Wednesday at home in Manhattan of congestive heart failure. He started working at the store, founded by his father, when he was 13, and just retired last November. During that time, he oversaw the store’s significant growth from its original home on Fourth Street with 70,000 volumes to “the largest used-book store in the world” on Broadway — where he bought the store’s building for $8.2 million in 1997 — with millions of volumes and a storage warehouse in Brooklyn. The NYT quotes a remark Bass made to New York […]
Free
People, Etc.
Natalie Grazian has joined Martin Literary & Media Management as associate literary manager. Previously she was a sales representative for Norton. At Putnam, Carolyn Darr and Madeline Schmitz have each been promoted to associate publicist. The LA Times names Kima Jones as a 2018 “literary breakthrough.” She is the founder of Jack Jones Literary Arts, an LA-based book publicity firm that focuses on representing women of color. “With her discerning eye for literature, keen awareness of what makes a successful book in the digital age and drive to empower writers who have been marginalized in publishing, Jones is an important new […]
People, Etc.
Sue Grafton, 77, author of the Kinsey Millhone series, died of cancer at her home in Santa Barbara on December 28. The alphabetical series began with A is for Alibi in 1982 and continued through her last book, Y Is for Yesterday, published in August 2016. She had not yet begun writing the final book of the series, which was to be titled Z Is for Zero and published August 2019. Her daughter Jamie Clark wrote in a message on Grafton’s Facebook page, “She was adamant that her books would never be turned into movies or TV shows, and in that same vein, she would […]
Another Chance: A Publishers Marketplace Year-End Free Trial
Everyone else is on break but we have posted a number of important updates today at PublishersMarketplace.com (and in the paid Publishers Lunch Deluxe), including an analysis of holiday book sales, a detailed wrap-up of sexual harassment cases and their impact on book publishing, an aggregation of some prominent lists highlighting new 2018 titles, and still more. (We also ran many stories of note on December 22 when others had already packed up for the holiday.) If you’re interested, you can check it all out with our second, year-end free trial offer. Join our site now and check out all of […]
Briefs: Tody Eady Dies, Plus Sensitivity Questions
In the UK, literary agent Toby Eady died on December 24. David Higham Associates, which acquired Eady’s agency in 2015, noted in a statement, “With great sadness we have to announce the death of our colleague, Toby Eady. Toby was a maverick, a passionate champion of his authors and advocate of their work.” He started Toby Eady Associates in 1968, and Bernard Cornwall was his first client. Self-published hit Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls has become the focus of complaints for featuring Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi as one its 100 great women. As British Labor MP and shadow justice minister […]
People, Etc.
Mary McCue has been promoted to director of publicity at Random House Children’s. At Holiday House, Emily Mannon has been promoted to marketing coordinator. Emily Campisano has been promoted to associate publicist. The Association of American University Presses has formally changed its name to the Association of University Presses (AUPresses). Executive Director Peter Berkery comments in the announcement, “Updating our name is simultaneously a return to roots and a flowering outwards, embracing what makes our members so essential to scholarly, civic, and cultural life.” In the UK, The Good Agency, a literary agency founded by Julia Kingsford and editor of The Good Immigrant, Nikesh Shukla, […]