Duluth, MN store Northern Lights Books & Gifts has been on the market since August with no buyer yet. Owner Anita Zager tells the local paper she will close the store when her lease expires next February if a buyer does not emerge. Zager says she is exiting due to both family concerns and competition from e-books. “It’s kind of a Gutenberg moment,” she says. “If we had the ability to sell e-books to our customers, it would be different.”Duluth News Tribune At the Borders store at the Indianapolis airport, copies of books by both Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck […]
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People, Awards, Announcements, Etc.
Courtney Young has been promoted to senior editor for Portfolio, Sentinel, and Current. At HarperCollins, David Sweeney has been promoted to vp, special markets responsible for mail order, retail, wholesale and premium, taking on added responsibility of leading the premium sales team. Alexandra Harris‘s ROMANTIC MODERNS: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper, won the Guardian First Book Award. Melville House has agreed to publish the winner of the new Paris Literary Prize, to be given by the Paris bookstore Shakespeare and Company to a previously unpublished writer working in English. The web site for […]
People, Etc.
Matthew Benjamin is moving to Touchstone on December 13 as senior editor, reporting to Trish Todd. He has been at HarperCollins, most recently as senior editor at William Morrow. At Touchstone, he will focus on acquiring men’s interest, celebrity, pop culture, sports, health, and investigative journalism. Allison Lorentzen is joining Penguin Books as editor. SHe was most recently an associate editor at HarperCollins. She will be acquiring both fiction and nonfiction titles, as well as working closely with Kathryn Court on Viking and Penguin acquisitions. The Lambda Literary Awards will be the new home for the Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists’ Prize, […]
People
Former longtime director of rights and contracts at McClelland & Stewart Marilyn Biderman has opened an eponymous literary agency, based in Toronto, and is out with her first submission in both the US and Canada: French-Canadian Marguerite Pigeon’s debut novel OPEN PIT. Biderman says she will represent genre, commercial and literary fiction, along with narrative nonfiction and memoir and “the occasional expert as a client as well.” In deciding her next step in publishing, Biderman says, “I really looked at what was important to me and where my allegiances lie. It’s always been with the publishing process and protecting the […]
Bookselling: New Owners for Children’s Store; Preserving Stores North of Boston
Jill Stefanovich and Jenesse Evertson, both buyers at Narnia Children’s Books in Richmond, VA, bought the store this fall after a deal to sell the store to someone else fell through and it faced closure. They have renamed it BBGB, which is “purposefully cryptic,” though it officially stands for Bring Back Great Books.Richmond Times Dispatch Following the closure of Cornerstone Books in Salem, MA, the Boston Globe looks at efforts to survive and prosper among bookstores in the North Shore area, where “about 30 independent booksellers open their doors every day in communities north of Boston, including a few in […]
Random’s Client Marketing Service, Plus People Updates
Random House’s distribution unit announced a new marketing service that provides their clients with “a range of robust tools for pursuing online marketing opportunities.” Manager, digital and paperback marketing at Crown Jay Sones will move to RH Publisher Services, where he will be senior online marketing manager, in charge of the new program. That tool set includes “marketing strategy development, online advertising campaigns; online media tours with authors; consultation on back-list opportunities on-line; and single-title campaigns for key front-list titles.” President of RHPS Jeff Abraham says in the announcement “our experience shows that these online marketing efforts, whether via Facebook, […]