Hachette Book Group evp, chief marketing and sales officer Evan Schnittman is leaving the company as of December 12, after two and a half years at the company. Schnittman’s position, which was created for him, is being eliminated. Instead, Chris Murphy is being promoted to svp, group sales director and will also join the company’s executive board. CEO Michael Pietsch calls Schnittman “a powerful agent of change and [he] has improved HBG’s sales processes and organization greatly. Evan brought the sales group into closer collaboration with our publishing groups than ever before. He combined digital and physical book sales, created the Sales Strategy and […]
Personnel
People, Etc.: Einstein Thompson Split, and More
Susanna Einstein and Meg Thompson will dissolve the Einstein Thompson Agency after the new year as they have “mutually and amicably decided to strike out on their own” after eight years working together, first at LJK Literary before forming their own agency. The Thompson Literary Agency and Einstein Literary Management will each open for business in January 2015, with both agencies continuing to work with Sandy Hodgman at Hodgman Literary for foreign rights. At Public Affairs, publicity director Jaime Leifer takes on the additional role of vp, associate publisher, reporting to Clive Priddle, recognizing her “growth as a leading voice […]
People, Etc.
Obituaries Novelist Kent Haruf, 71, has died, his editor Gary Fisketjon confirmed to the Washington Post on Sunday. The new issue of Granta has an autobiographical essay by Haruf, and his novel OUR SOULS AT NIGHT is due to be published next year. Fisketjon said, “Kent had finished all his revisions and even gone through the copy editing. We had it scheduled for May, though I haven’t yet processed how this tragic news might alter those plans.” PD James, 94, the British crime writer and member of the House of Lords, died Thursday morning at her home in Oxford. She was the author […]
People, Etc.
Shawna Mullen will join Abrams as associate publisher, adult trade on December 15, reporting to Michael Sand. Previously she was executive editor at Taunton Press and before then, editorial director at Clarkson Potter, where she helped launch the Potter Craft imprint. PEN announced a new PEN/Fusion Emerging Writers Prize to support an unpublished manuscript that “addresses a global and/or multicultural issue,” from a writer under the age of 35. As of January 1 eBook Architects will close their Austin, TX office. The core staff, including the unit’s lead Joshua Tallent, will continue their work with Firebrand (and their FlightDeck EPUB testing and validation tool) and […]
People
Vanessa Mobley is moving to Little, Brown as executive editor, starting December 1, reporting to Judy Clain. She had been an executive editor at Crown. Jon Pott, vp, editor-in-chief of of Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, has announced that he will retire on June 30, 2015. He first joined the company in 1968 as editor, rising up to become editor-in-chief in 1982. “When I came to the company I intended to stay for one year,” Pott said in the announcement, “Forty-six years later, that is a deadline I am deeply grateful to have missed.” He added: “If — as I have been […]
People, Etc.
Jill Smith has been appointed director of the Denver Publishing Institute, effective January 1, 2015. Smith has worked at the Institute since 2003 and is currently co-director. She succeeds Joyce Meskis, who is retiring as director after seven years (though she will keep her responsibilities at Tattered Cover Bookstore.) Rayhane Sanders will join Lippincott Massie McQuilkin as Agent, effective January 1, continuing to build her list of upmarket and literary fiction, narrative nonfiction, and memoir. Most recently she was an agent at WSK Management and before that she assisted Dorian Karchmar at William Morris Endeavor. At Little, Brown, Fiona Brown has been […]