Marilynne Robinson‘s HOME won the UK’s Orange Prize for the best novel written by a woman. The Guardian opines that “the strength of American writing this year once again calls into question the exclusion of US writers from the Booker prize, which allows only Commonwealth entries.” (Also remember the basic rule of thumb; favorites never win the Booker, but usually do win the Orange.)Guardian Evan Goldfried has joined Jill Grinberg Literary Management as an agent after five years at William Morris. He is representing genre fiction and graphic novels for all ages, as well as nonfiction including food, health, humor […]
Personnel
Friedman, Morrison and Lebowitz Promote New Council to Fight for Free Speech
“It’s just been too quiet,” former HarperCollins ceo Jane Friedman said at a party at her house last night to help launch the Free Speech Leadership Council–which she is chairing–of the National Coalition Against Censorship. “I don’t like being quiet,” Friedman added. “How can you be a publisher and not care about this? Friedman was introduced to the group by Chip Gibson at Random House, and others from book publishing becoming involved include Vicky Wilson, Binky Urban, Peter Workman, Larry Kirshbaum. The event also launched BURN THIS BOOK, an anthology prepared in conjunction with the PEN American Center just published […]
People and Awards
The Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards for excellence in children’s literature have gone to Terry Pratchett’s NATION for fiction and poetry; Candace Fleming’s THE LINCOLNS: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary for nonfiction; and Margaret Mahy and illustrator Polly Dunbar’s BUBBLE TROUBLE for picture book. Dan O’Connell, who has been providing publicity and marketing services to clients of The Strothman Agency since 2003, will now run a spinoff, Epilogue Media–offering those services for a fee to outside authors as well as Strothman clients. Consumers Union will distribute their book titles through Ingram Publisher Services.
HMH Creates Digital Team; RAND Drops eBook Prices; SuperKindle Release, and More
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 […]
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 […]