Rich Freese will take over from Jed Lyons as president of NBN as of July 6, working out of Oakland, CA. Lyons will “focus on the book publishing activities of NBN’s parent company, The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group.” (The release says NBN had sales of $100 million, and R&L had sales of $60 million.) Most recently Freese had launched a new distribution enterprise for BookMasters, though he worked at NBN in the late 90s and through 2002. Lyons says in the announcement “Rich Freese is the most knowledgeable, thoughtful, and creative person I know in the book distribution business.” […]
Personnel
People
Random House UK ceo Gail Rebuck was made a Dame on the Queen’s Birthday Honors List (her husband is already a Lord). In annual income disclosures, Senator Ted Kennedy reported that he was paid $2 million as an advance (presumably only the first part) for his memoir in 2008. (The full price was reportedly about $8 million.) This week’s New Yorker profiles Nora Roberts, “America’s most popular novelist”–whom the magazine explains to its readers is like “the Raymond Carver of romance,” at least in her “choice of milieu.” (They note that the Times Book Review has reviewed just one of […]
People, Awards, Announcements
Michael Thomas was the surprise winner of the IMPAC Prize for his debut novel MAN GONE DOWN, published by Grove/Atlantic. The judges said: “We never know his name. But the African-American protagonist of Michael Thomas’s masterful debut, Man Gone Down, will stay with readers for a long time. Tuned urgently to the way we live now, [Man Gone Down] is a novel brilliant in its scope and energy, and deeply moving in its human warmth.” Len Vlahos has been promoted to chief operating officer at the American Booksellers Association, filling the position held by Oren Teicher before he advanced to […]
People and More
Publisher of Sweden’s Nicotext Fredrik Colting has now admitted that he wrote 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye and invented the pseudonym JD California. (A photo that ran in the Telegraph depicted a friend of Colting’s who is an actor.) Colting claims not to have understood he was echoing Salinger’s name with his pseudonym: “Somehow, John David California sounded like JD. I didn’t think about that actually. I just thought it sounded cool. Of course afterwards, I see the resemblance.” He has also backed off of his fiery language about the suit and now claims, “I’ve never said this […]
Another High-Profile Resignation at Granta, and More People News
This time it’s at Granta Publications and Portobello Books, where David Graham has resigned as managing director. Announced in a two-line statement, the company says “queries previously directed to David Graham should be directed to Granta publisher Sigrid Rausing.” Graham came over from Canongate in 2006. Also in the UK, Hannah Black is leaving Century to join Harper UK in August as a publisher at Harper Nonfiction, reporting to Carole Tonkinson, the Bookseller reports. At Sourcebooks, Rebecca Frazer has joined the company’s New York office an acquisitions editor for Jabberwocky. She has acquired and edited children’s books for HarperCollins, Simon […]
People and More
Yesterday Barnes & Noble named Katherine Howe’s debut novel The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane as their latest chainwide “recommended” title. Harper UK’s children’s division is making the same cuts to staff that were recently imposed on the rest of the company, with publishing directors Gillie Russell and Sue Buswell both leaving the company. But managing director Mario Santos tells the Bookseller “both Gillie and Sue have agreed to continue to work with us on specific projects.” But an update of the story says Buswell will join Random House Children’s at the end of June as part-time maternity cover for […]