Kate Elton will join HarperCollins UK as publisher of Harper Fiction, replacing Lynne Drew, who is giving up the position for personal reasons (though she will continue to edit select authors.) Elton spent the past 15 years at Random House UK, where she was publisher of Cornerstone’s Arrow and Century imprints. Larry Bennett has joined Bookmasters as president of its international sales division, focusing on growing the company’s foreign-language book development and distribution efforts in the US and abroad. Previously he managed Baker & Taylor’s digital print media program. PEN American Center has announced a new award for picture book […]
Personnel
People, Etc.: S&S Opens Division In India
Simon & Schuster has created a New Delhi-based sales, marketing and publishing company, Simon & Schuster India. The company’s exclusive sales agent on the subcontinent Rahul Srivastava will run the new unit locally as director of sales and marketing, reporting to S&S UK executive director Kerr MacRae. HarperCollins India will handle fulfillment and distribution, with “operations expected to commence August 1.” Inventory will come mostly from S&S UK, and they will offer titles from all of S&S’s divisions worldwide and distribution clients. Samantha Dell’Olio has joined book and author publicity firm Nissen Public Relations as publicity manager. She was most […]
Lubeck Departs BISG
Book Industry Study Group executive director Scott Lubeck is leaving his position “for personal reasons” and will return to his home in Austin, TX. Lubeck took over at the BISG in January 2010. Deputy Executive Director Angela Bole will fulfill the functions of the executive director on an interim basis, and a search committee has been formed and will work with Bert Davis & Associates to look for a replacement to lead the organization.
Len Riggio Will Depart GameStop Board
Barnes & Noble chairman Len Riggio “has decided not to stand for re-election” to the board of directors of GameStop, the company noted in a recent SEC filing. Gamestop says that in fiscal 2010 “medical reasons prevented [Riggio’s] attendance” at a minimum of 75 percent of the board meetings, missing five of 12 meetings in all. “The company said two of those meetings were stacked around the time Riggio had what Barnes & Noble described as a minor medical procedure.” Barnes & Noble indicates Riggio missed the other meetings due to conflicting commitments to other boards. Riggio has been progressively […]
People: Lotts, Schelling Open New Agencies
Chris Lotts and Christopher Schelling have left Ralph Vicinanza Ltd to open new agencies. The Lotts Agency will continue Lotts’s representation of commercial fiction and targeted upmarket non-fiction in a mix of domestic and foreign rights, working on behalf of Stephen King, George R.R. Martin, Robin Hobb, Connie Willis, Robert J. Sawyer R. Scott Bakker, Stacia Kane and Lia Hable, among many others. At Schelling’s new shop, Selectric Artists, he will continue with authors like Augusten Burroughs, Cinda Williams Chima, John Elder Robison, Louis Bayard, Kim Stanley Robinson and Haven Kimmel, while also expanding his representation into other media, such […]
People, Etc.: Rosenthal is Blue Rider
David Rosenthal‘s new imprint at Penguin, launching in November, will be called Blue Rider Press. The release informs us: “The Blue Rider, or in German, Der Blaue Reiter, was an iconoclastic movement in music and painting now seen as a driving force of modern art. Established in Munich, Germany in 1911, The Blue Rider was a loose association of painters determined to promote individual expression and break free of any conventional artistic restraints.” Among the newly-announced authors for the line are Senator George McGovern’s What It Means To Be A Democrat and a parody, Goodnight iPad, for this fall, and New York […]