At F+W Media, Kate Rados has been promoted to group marketing director, and both Rados and Kathleen Blackwelder are joining the company’s executive committee. Merriam-Webster has hired Caryl Schivley as vp, chief financial officer/chief administrative officer. She was previously vp, finance for Atlas Copco Construction Tools. The new Danish Hans Christian Andersen literature prize, worth almost $100,000, has gone to JK Rowling. Given to “a writer whose work can be compared to that of Andersen,” it should not be confused with the established Hans Christian Andersen medal, which is often pitched as the Nobel for children’s books.Guardian The AAP’s Young […]
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People, Awards, etc.
Ryan Doherty has moved over from Ballantine to Random House Trade Paperbacks as an editor, reporting to Jane von Mehren. And Erika Greber has joined the Random House Publishing Group as assistant marketing manager for Random House, Spiegel & Grau, Dial Press, and The Modern Library. She was a marketing associate at Random House Audio. At Simon & Schuster, Kate Ankofski has been promoted to associate editor. Elsewhere in the company, Meredith Wahl-Jones moves over to the Free Press as a publicist, after working as an associate publicist at Scribner. Samhain Publishing has hired Heather Osborn as editorial director, reporting […]
People, Awards, Etc.
ICM has hired Nick Harris from Mosaic (which he joined last November) as co-head of their book-to-film department, alongside the newly-promoted Josie Freedman, who has been at ICM since 2001. Harris was a partner at Rabineau Wachter Sanford Harris, and prior to that worked at AP Watt. Borders has named Scott Henry as their new evp, chief financial officer, effective today, filling the post vacated by Mark Bierley in August. Henry, 45, has been president of business and financial consulting services firm S.D. Henry Strategic Services, after five years as cfo of Las Vegas Sands Corp. Barnes & Noble has […]
People, Etc.: Janklow Hires NYT’s Julie Just, Phaidon’s New CEO, and More
Children’s book editor of the New York Times Book Review Julie Just will join Janklow & Nesbit as an agent in November. Mort Janklow says in the announcement, “It has been our intention for some time to expand the range of agency services we offer to include in a major way children’s and young adult literature.” Lynn Nesbit calls Just “the ideal person to spearhead this new effort.” Phaidon Press, which recently hired Amanda Ridout as managing director, has now appointed David Davies as chief executive officer, starting November 29 and based in London. He is currently managing director at […]
National Book Award Nominees Avoid the Predictable, Give Carey A Second Shot
The National Book Foundation announced their award nominees this morning, with novelist Peter Carey getting another chance at honors after coming up short last night in his quest for a third Booker win. Coffee House Press and McPherson claim two of the fiction nominations, likely to fuel rights and/or paperback interest. (Yamashita’s book is a paperback original; Gordon’s book has not been published yet.) Last year it was the bestselling books that won the two biggest categories, Colum McCann’s LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN for fiction and T. J. Stiles’ THE FIRST TYCOON: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt for […]
Amazon to Feature Shorter “Kindle Singles”
Veterans of the ebook business may recall a modest (at best) initiative from 2005 called “Amazon Shorts,” selling “short-form literature from top authors” including Audrey Niffenegger, Stuart Woods, Robert Rhodes, Robin Cook, James Lee Burke, Danielle Steel, and Ann Beattie at 49 cents each. Amazon officially discontinued the program this June and reverted rights (with a suggestion to move that material to the Kindle platform). Today Amazon has announced what could be seen as that program’s successor, dropping the length/underwear metaphor for one from the music industry: Kindle Singles. “Singles” are described as pieces running between 10,000 words to 30,000 […]