Kobo has hired Phil Wood for the new position of country manager, UK. Wood was at TomKat Consulting, serving the consumer technology, electronics and IT sectors, prior to which he director of Interead, which attracted attention for its inexpensive COOL-ER ereaders (before going out of business). Kobo general manager Matt Welch says in the announcement, “Having someone with Wood’s technology, commercial and eReading expertise positions us well for our planned growth in the UK. We have seen tremendous first six months here and with Phil as country manager I am confident we’ll see Kobo continuing to drive forward the ereading revolution.” […]
Personnel
People, Etc.
Senior editor of the New York Times Book Review (and husband of novelist Amy Waldman) Alexander Star will join Farrar, Straus and Giroux as a senior editor on April 2. Before moving to the book review, Star was deputy editor of the NYT Magazine. Earlier in his career he was founding editor of the Boston Globe’s Ideas section and editor of Lingua Franca: The Review of Academic Life. At Canada’s Douglas & McIntyre, co-founder Scott McIntyre will give up his role as CEO on July 1, though he will remain actively involed and continue as chairman. Current director, operations and […]
People, Etc.
Jack Scovil, a literary agent for more than 40 years and founding partner of Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency, died last week after a brief illness. He was 74. Scovil began his career and spent 20 years at the Scott Meredith Agency, leaving in 1992 to start the agency with Russell Galen and then-partner Ted Chicack. Among the authors Scovil worked with during his career included Norman Mailer, Carl Sagan, Arthur C. Clarke, Walter Anderson, Edward Klein, Larry Smith, Margaret Truman, and James Brady. Scovil was active in the firm’s affairs and the representation of his own clients until the […]
People, Etc.
Deputy CEO of DK John Duhigg will step up to global CEO of the publisher at the beginning of April, and will join the Penguin Group Board as well. Current ceo Peter Field is preparing to retire from Penguin at the end of the year after a 35-year career at the company. Between April and the year-end, Field “will retain his current responsibilities for Penguin in Australia and New Zealand and take on a range of international projects across the company.” F+W Media will launch Prologue Books, a new imprint devoted to reissuing out-of-print hardboiled and pulp novels originally published between […]
People: Orion to Restructure
As part of a restructure, Orion will replace its trade and paperback divisions with Orion Fiction (housing more than half of its frontlist titles, and nearly all of its crime fiction) and Orion General (for Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Phoenix, Gollancz, and Orion Children’s.) Current trade managing director Lisa Milton will run the General division, while Susan Lamb, who oversees the paperback division, will now run Orion Fiction. Deputy ceo and group publisher Malcolm Edwards explained the restructure in a statement: “Orion’s structure has served us exceptionally well for our first two decades, but we need to look to the future. […]
People, Etc.
A Public Space editor Brigid Hughes will join Graywolf Press as contributing editor as part of a new collaborative venture between the literary magazine and the publishing house. Graywolf plans to publish two A Public Space books per year, to be chosen and edited by Hughes, with “A Public Space Book” printed on the back cover and in the interior. The inaugural book will be selected in the coming months. “The collaboration is a natural extension of our work with writers in A Public Space—it will be wonderful to stay involved in a piece that starts in our pages as […]