Soumeya Bendimerad Roberts has joined Hannigan Salky Getzler Agency as agent and rights director. She will be focusing on her literary fiction, narrative non-fiction list, and young adult list. Roberts was most recently an agent at Writers House. In addition, Leigh Eisenman and Tanusri Prasanna have both been promoted to agent. Eisenman will be growing her practical non-fiction and literary/upmarket fiction list, and Prasanna will focus on picture books, middle grade, and young adult titles. At Holloway Literary, Kortney Price has been promoted to associate agent. Susan Rella recently joined Melville House as managing editor. Previously she was managing editor at Gallery. […]
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Kensington editor-in-chief John Scognamiglio will run the eponymous John Scognamiglio Books imprint, publishing 4 to 6 works of commercial fiction a year in hardcover, beginning in 2018 with titles including The Last Suppers by Mandy Mikulencak (January 2018) and This I Know by Eldonna Edwards (May 2018). CEO Steven Zacharius says in the announcement, “We’re so pleased to offer John his own imprint…. John has nurtured and guided his authors to great commercial success and critical acclaim…. For him to curate and shape his own list will give readers a special opportunity to be introduced to wonderful stories and discover new authors.” Scognamiglio, who has […]
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At Disney-Hyperion, Rotem Moscovich has been promoted to executive editor, Laura Schreiber has been promoted to senior editor, and Hannah Allaman moves up to assistant editor. Seattle Times book editor Mary Ann Gwinn is leaving after 34 years at the newspaper (18 as book editor). In this column, “she looks back at notable adventures and thanks you, the readers and writers who built our city of literature.” Distribution IPG will handle North American sales and distribution for Albert Whitman, beginning with the publisher’s digital frontlist as of February 1, and adding print titles as of April 1. Whitman has been […]
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Doris Janhsen has been appointed publisher and ceo of Munich-based Droemer Knaur Publishing Group, as of July 1 and will the Holtzbrinck Buchverlage board. Currently, Janhsen is publisher at Oetinger, and she was publisher for hardcover fiction at Droemer from 2004 to 2006. Janhsen will succeed Hans-Peter Übleis, who will continue to serve as publisher at large for Droemer and advisor for the Holtzbrinck group. Daniel Berkowitz joins Writers House on Monday as digital director. He was previously senior editor at Digital Book World. The executive overseeing Digital Book World Phil Sexton also left parent company FW Media last week. Sexton was a vice president and […]
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Susan Jurevics will leave her position as ceo of Pottermore at the end of February, and she will not be replaced. Rather, Neil Blair will oversee the initiative, with the current leadership under Jurevics taking on responsibility for day-to-day operations. As we pointed out in November, on an operating basis Pottermore has lost close to £50 million, showing a slim overall profit primarily driven by the windfall of guaranteed royalties from Sony — which terminated their licensing deal after failing to gain traction of their own. The company did say it was “on the path to profitability” for the current fiscal year, […]
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At Picador USA, Anna DeVries has been promoted to executive editor. Susan Hawk will move to Upstart Crow Literary as an agent on February 1. She has been at The Bent Agency. Christina Jeffries has been promoted to vp, director, national accounts, mass merchandise sales at Random House Children’s. Former HarperCollins India publisher V.K. Karthika has joined Westland as publisher. Amazon bought control of the company last October. A spokesperson told HuffPost India she will “head a newly-formed division at Westland, focusing on literary and mainstream fiction and non-fiction.” Oprah Winfrey is returning to network television — as a special contributor to […]