Touchstone editor-in-chief Trish Todd will leave that division after 15 years to move over to the Simon & Schuster adult trade imprint at the beginning of February. She will be executive editor, reporting to publisher Jon Karp. He writes, “to my surprise, I discovered the perfect choice right down the hallway” in his search for “a highly respected and experienced editor to acquire works of popular fiction, practical nonfiction and autobiography.” Karp adds, “In making the move to S&S, Trish recently expressed to me her desire to shift her focus away from management and return exclusively to her greatest joy, […]
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Kobo has hired Pieter Swinkels as Director of Publisher and Industry Relations for Europe, leading the company’s expansion there. He was associate publisher of De Bezige Bij and publisher of Cargo in Holland. In his new role at Kobo, Swinkels will be responsible for driving forward Kobo’s ambitious expansion into the European market. The company notes “the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the Netherlands currently have the highest European Kobo user counts, but the company is quickly expanding its audience in Spain, Portugal and Italy.” The Gail Ross Literary Agency has changed its name to The Ross Yoon Agency. Agency […]
Amazon Provides Authors with Limited Nielsen BookScan Data
As of today Amazon is letting authors enrolled in their “Author Central” program (e.g. FiledBy for Amazon) access a small window of Nielsen BookScan sales data for their own books. Needless to say, the offer is a major inducement for authors not already enrolled to sign up for the Author Central. The program shows the most recent four weeks of sales as tracked by Nielsen, on a week-by-week basis. It also provides geographical breakdowns, showing the same limited data set according to local DMA markets. They provide a nice visual national mapping of the data that Nielsen itself provides to […]
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David Rosenthal begins getting the old team back together for his new imprint at Penguin Group, hiring Sarah Hochman as senior editor, starting January 10. Hochman was a senior editor at Simon & Schuster until August. At Harper’s Avon/Morrow division, Kristine Macrides has been promoted to director of marketing and sales development. In Harper UK’s digital team under David Roth-Ey, Jo Forshaw moves up to director of audio; Isabella Steel becomes digital key account manager, responsible for marketing and promotion of digital titles across the group; Katy Whitehead the new role of head of interactive products; and Friday Project and […]
Oprah to Pick Two Dickens’ Books
Monday Oprah Winfrey selects Charles Dickens’ GREAT EXPECTATIONS and A TALE OF TWO CITIES as her new book club picks, revealed early when the AP purchased a copy of Penguin’s special edition $20 paperback with Oprah Book Club logo on the cover. While Penguin’s edition is the official one, multiple classics publishers have the opportunity to benefit from the selections, including Barnes & Noble. Penguin’s official ebook edition is priced at $7.99, as previously reported, though ebook editions are easily obtainable for anywhere from free to ninety-nine cents (per book).
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Oxford University Press announces, via Publishing Trends, that publisher of trade and academic books Niko Pfund will take on the additional position of interim president of OUP USA. The University of California Press has hired Alison Mudditt as its new executive director, taking over next month when Lynne Withey retires. She had been executive vice president in charge of higher education programs at SAGE Publications. (According to the LAT, the job pays $244,900.) Simon & Schuster associate publisher since 2004 Aileen Boyle is leaving the company at the end of the year to attend graduate school at NYU and spend […]