ICM announced to employees on Friday afternoon an agreement “on principle terms to establish an agent-owned partnership for ICM,” designed to buyout the controlling stake held by Suhail Rizvi and his private equity firm Rizvi Traverse Management. The financial firm bought into ICM in 2005 for $75 million and helped finance the acquisition the following year of Broder Webb Chervin Silbermann. The agreement comes after weeks of breathless speculation from Deadline.com and other Hollywood trades, though the WSJ‘s sources “said the agents had been negotiating with Rizvi toward Friday’s deal for a month, and described it as an amicable transaction.” […]
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Hilary Redmon will join Ecco as executive editor, focusing on non-fiction, starting on December 19. She has been a senior editor at Free Press. Literary agent Emmanuelle Morgen will join Stonesong on January 5, representing adult and children’s fiction, including women’s fiction and romance, historical fiction, and young adult fiction, and nonfiction in the areas of psychology, pop science, self-help, and memoir. Morgen has been at Judith Ehrlich Literary Management. In the rapidly-consolidating Dutch publishing world, NDC/VBK will put its imprints Contact, Mouria and Augustus together with the two Amstel imprints LJ Veen and Atlas to form a new publishing […]
People, Etc.
PGW will distribute four new clients as of Spring 2012: Paper Punk Books, Tara Books, Readers to Eaters, and Watershed Media. Watershed will also use Constellation for ebook distribution, as will existing PGW client Night Shade Books. Pauline Hsia has joined the Doris S. Michaels Agency as an assistant. She was most recently with the Queens Ledger. Novelist and film critic Gilbert Adair, 66, died earlier this month. Novels by Adair were the basis for the films LOVE AND DEATH IN LONG ISLAND (1997) and THE DREAMERS (2003), and he also wrote film columns for the Sunday Times and the Guardian. Obit
Earnings Suffer At Wiley, On “Slowdown In Education”
Wiley’s net income of $50.7 million was down over 5 percent in their fiscal second quarter, falling more than sales, which declined less than 1 percent, at $447 million. The company lowered their sales guidance for the year, from mid-single-digit growth to low-single-digit-growth, while keeping their earnings forecast the same. It’s “the slowdown in education [that] continued to weigh on overall results,” ceo Stephen Smith said in the release. On the reduced earnings, the company cited “technology spending to support investments in digital products and infrastructure and facility costs related to consolidation of operations.” The professional/trade division “continues to perform […]
Grand Central Pairs with Little Brown UK for Crime In Translation
Hachette divisions in the US and UK–Grand Central and Little Brown UK–are forming a transatlantic venture to publish crime, suspense and thrillers in translation. They will be part of the Grand Central line in the US, and in the UK will comprise a new imprint, Trapdoor. The partners intend to publish up to six books a year. Mitch Hoffman will run the effect from the US, and Sphere associate publisher Dan Mallory will oversee the UK side. The first announced title is Swedish authors Hjorth & Rosenfeldt’s DARK SECRETS, already sold in 16 territories, the first in a series featuring a psychological […]
People: Abrams Restructures Editorial Team, and More
Abrams announced a series of changes to its editorial and art & design departments, which will now be spearheaded by svp, publisher Steve Tager. Deborah Aaronson has been promoted to associate publisher, adult trade, with responsibility for Abrams’ adult editorial resources and the adult art and design department. Both Aaronson and publishing director for lifestyle Leslie Stoker will report to Tager. Jennifer Levesque moves up to editorial director, reporting to Aaronson, where she will oversee Abrams Image. Adam Silverman is joining Monsoon Commerce as general manager of Alibris. CEO Brian Elliott says “his appointment reinforces our commitment to developing the […]