Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s trade and reference division has created a Digital Strategy and Planning Group, led by svp Cheryl Cramer Toto (who had been the company’s vp of development and planning, a job that included leading the integration of Harcourt and Houghton Mifflin). Under Toto are vp of digital content development David Jost, vp of digital business development David Langevin, and Sanj Kharbanda, who has been promoted to vp of digital market strategy. He “will identify unique market opportunities for Houghton digital content and develop and implement innovative consumer-facing programs.” Yesterday the RAND Corporation announced they were lowering list price […]
Personnel
People: Krieger to Retire
Associate publisher of Simon & Schuster Children’s Aladdin imprint Ellen Krieger will retire at the end of June after fifteen years at the company. While at S&S, she oversaw the merging of Pocket’s middle grade and teen imprints into the Children’s division’s Aladdin and Pulse imprints and launched Aladdin Mix. She comments: “It’s hard to imagine a more satisfying last chapter of my publishing career than my fifteen years at Simon & Schuster, shepherding Aladdin…through a number of exciting incarnations. I’m not sure what the next chapter will be; right now, I’m looking forward to not setting an alarm, and […]
Geringer Allies with Egmont USA
Children’s publishing start-up Egmont USA has “formed an alliance” with Laura Geringer Books. Geringer ran her imprint for 17 years at Harper Children’s until leaving the company last August. At the time, Susan Katz said in the memo announcing Geringer’s departure that she “looks forward to having more time to pursue her career as a writer, to devote her energies to the development of a new business with the capability of delivering story content on multiple platforms, and to channel more time into First Book.” Geringer will edit “a select group of titles” for Egmont starting with the fall 20l0 […]
People: Howard Adds Two Execs
Becky Nesbitt will join Howard Books as vp, editor-in-chief on June 1 and Jennifer Willingham has already started as vp, publicity. Nesbitt was at Tyndale House for 16 years, most recently as associate publisher for nonfiction (though she led the fiction acquisitions team prior to that). Willingham worked for Guideposts Books most recently, and has also worked at Thomas Nelson and B&H. Recently appointed publisher Jonathan Merkh says that “moving the business to Nashville has enabled us to attract key talent to further fuel our growth. With the backing of Simon & Schuster and our new staff additions, we are […]
People: Salvatore to Lead Broadway, and More
Broadway has hired Diane Salvatore as vp, publisher, effective immediately, reporting to Crown Publishing Group president Jenny Frost. Deputy editorial director Charlie Conrad and the rest of the Broadway editorial staff now report to Salvatore. A longtime magazine editor, she was editor in chief of of Ladies’ Home Journal for six years, through July 2008, where she relaunched it as “a modern magazine with lush photography and sophisticated design, while continuing and amplifying its tradition for high-quality journalism and social advocacy.” She published short fiction by authors including Lesley Dormen and Elizabeth Berg in the magazine, and is the author […]
People and Announcements
Doubleday executive editor Gerry Howard has been named the winner of the Mercantile Library Center for Fiction’s Maxwell E. Perkins Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Field of Fiction. Chairman Peter Ginna said, “Over the course of many years Gerald Howard has introduced and championed the work of a host of writers who have helped to push the boundaries of contemporary fiction.” Random House UK launched their social networking site for book clubs, ReadersPlace, a follow-on to last year’s AuthorsPlace site, which lets the publisher’s authors set up, personalize and update their own web pages and manage their own online […]