After just five months as chief executive at the Headline group in the UK, Kate Wilson has left the company by “mutual agreement” according to a brief statement. Hachette UK adds that “after a period of consultation, a more detailed announcement will follow.” Wilson was supposed to be taking over from Martin Neild as he prepared to retire from the company in 2010. For now, deputy managing directors Jane Morpeth and Kerr MacRae will report to Neild again. In unrelated Hachette UK news, Jon Wood has been promoted to deputy group publisher, reporting to Malcolm Edwards in the new role–while […]
International News
New Imprints from Sourcebooks and Rizzoli
Building on their success this year with YA novels and the growth of the children’s imprint Jabberwocky launched three years ago, Sourcebooks is creating a YA imprint called Fire, to launch in spring 2010 with seven titles. Editor Dan Ehrenhaft, who came over to Sourcebooks from Alloy Entertainment this spring, will lead the new line. CEO Dominique Raccah says “we want voices that will ignite, inspire, and surprise teens, regardless of genre.” The company says Fire will acquire fiction “in a variety of media, bringing worlds to life via the web, audio, digital–whatever teens are looking for, wherever they’re looking […]
Spanish Media Company Sells Stake in Santillana
Houghton parent company Education Media is hardly the only overindebted conglomerate with book publishing interests. This morning Spanish media group Prisa said it would sell a 25 percent stake in book publisher Grupo Santillana for approximately $362 million. The buyer is Credit Suisse-run private equity firm DLJ South American Partners. Spain’s biggest media company, Prisa carries debt of over 5 billion euros, so the sale of the Santillana stake will have little overall impact. Santillana is “one of Prisa’s most profitable units,” the WSJ notes, adding that “the fact that Prisa is selling off part of such a lucrative unit […]
People
Boston Globe books editor for the past seven years Jim Concannon is leaving the paper to work as news editor at Harvard’s public affairs office.Phoenix In the UK, publishing director at Chatto & Windus for the past 12 years Alison Samuel announced that she will retire at the end of the year. Editorial director Clara Farmer will move up to publishing director in January. Samuel says in the announcement: “I wanted to go out on a high. How could I possibly better the last 18 months in which Rose Tremain won the Orange Prize, Alice Munro was awarded the Man […]
Rights News: Canada's Cooke Takes Over Rights Sales for Random Canada and McClelland & Stewart
Agents and business partners Dean Cooke and Sally Harding are creating a new company, the Cooke Agency International, to sell rights for Canadian publishers and agencies. Sub rights director Suzanne Brandreth will oversee daily operations from a new office, with Cooke and Harding working for both the new company and their existing Cooke Agency. Random House Canada will use the new operation to sell “the majority of our subsidiary rights,” including foreign rights, permissions, and domestic book club sales. Random House Canada ceo Brad Martin says “the reality of our business is that we can no longer financially justify maintaining […]
Venezuela's Crackdown on Book Imports Hurts Booksellers, Publishers
In March 2008, what was originally seen as a “minor bureaucratic change” to downgrade the import status of books from “essential goods” to requiring government certification of how many copies could be brought in has, according to Publishing Perspectives, begun “gradually choking off the flow of imported books, which make up 80% of the market in Venezuela” and created a “catastrophic” shortage of books. With bestselling titles, even if demand is great, only a select number of copies may be approved at one time and by the time a publisher is allowed to reapply for permission to import additional copies […]