Seth Russo, vice president and director of international sales at Simon & Schuster will retire on April 20, after 35 years in international sales. Executive director, global digital and international sales Colin Shields will take on the direct, day-to-day responsibility for the international sales channel. Newly reporting to him will be Rema Badwan and Danielle Cumbo, and Christina “Chrissy” Festa will add audio sales to her portfolio as director, audio, digital and online sales. The New York Times Book Review is adding a new monthly column about graphic novels and comics. The columnists will be Hillary Chute, author of Why Comics? From […]
New Imprints
People, Etc.
Rachel Ekstrom Courage has moved to Folio Literary Management as an agent representing adult, young adult, and middle grade fiction and select nonfiction projects. Previously she was an agent at the Irene Goodman Literary Agency. At Sterling Lord Literistic, Laurie Liss has been promoted to executive vice president and managing partner, and Nadyne Pike moves up to chief operating officer. (Doug Stewart and Celeste Fine were both made vice president, as well.) At Knopf Children’s, Marisa de Novis has been promoted to assistant editor. Macmillan Children’s announced a number of promotions: Liz Dresner has been promoted to associate art director; Rebecca […]
Briefs: Flame Tree Publishing Launches; Gates Touts New Pinker; and More
London-based Flame Tree Publishing is building on their recent work in publishing genre short stories to launch the trade fiction imprint Flame Tree Press in September with 12 titles, and aims to publish 24 to 30 horror, crime, science fiction and fantasy books a year. Run by founder Nick Wells, Don D’Auria is the executive editor based in New York, working with the UK editorial board of Laura Bulbeck, Cat Taylor, Josie Mitchell, and Gillian Whitaker. Baker & Taylor Publisher Services will manage US sales. In the UK, former executive director of S&S UK and longtime Hachette UK executive Kerr MacRae has launched […]
Corporate: Amazon Tries Digital Stories Again; And More
Amazon is making yet another pass at short-form digital prose after years of failing to establish a market of scale, this time by announcing an imprint of Amazon Publishing called Amazon Original Stories. They will publish short works of fiction and nonfiction that can be read in a single sitting, available for purchase in the Kindle Singles store for $1.99 and free for Prime members. The first two titles, The Sign of the Beast by Joyce Carol Oates and Crown Heights by Colin Warner and Carl King, are already available, with work on deck from W. Kamau Bell, Jade Chang, Eddie Huang, Dean Koontz, and more. […]
People: Lee Boudreaux Leaves Imprint for Doubleday
A little less than two years after books from her eponymous imprint starting coming to market, Lee Boudreaux will leave Little, Brown to join Doubleday as vice president and executive editor, reporting to Bill Thomas, starting November 13. From our deal reports we count at least eight titles signed to Lee Boudreaux Books that have not been published yet, all of which will be assigned to new editors and issued by Little, Brown. Little, Brown publisher Reagan Arthur writes, “Lee has been a really great colleague and we loved having her here. A lot! But she decided she needed to make a change.” […]
Briefs: A Public Space to Launch APS Books, and More
Literary magazine A Public Space is launching a book imprint, APS Books. Founding editor Brigid Hughes will lead the imprint. The first title will be Betty Howland’s collection of short stories Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage in 2018, with titles to follow from British filmmaker Sally Potter and artist Dorothea Tanning, as well as an “anthology of responses to Italo Calvino unwritten sixth memo, edited by Martha Cooley, with contributions from Jhumpa Lahiri and Andrei Codrescu, among others.” Hughes succeeded George Plimpton as the editor of the Paris Review in 2003 and left to found A Public Space in 2006. She […]