George Bick has joined the Doug Grad Literary Agency as an associate agent. A sales and marketing veteran of over twenty years at Warner Books, Random House, Simon & Schuster, and HarperCollins, he was most recently svp, director of sales and associate publisher. Bick is actively looking for narrative non-fiction, business, science fiction, horror/paranormal, thrillers, military, comics and graphic novels, diet/self-help, memoir, pets/animals, romance, science, humor, pop culture, and travel. Former managing director at Granta Publications David Graham will serve as a senior advisor to digital publisher. He tells the Bookseller he is “looking forward to helping develop the company’s […]
Personnel
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At Dutton, Ben Sevier has been promoted to executive editor. Agent Amy Tipton has left FinePrint Literary Management to join Signature Literary Agency. Former Pantheon publisher Janice Goldklang has joined Globe Pequot Press as executive director of editorial. The Frankfurt Book Fair has fired project manager Peter Ripken, saying in a statement it was for “ongoing difficulties.” As Deutsche World notes, it was Ripken who “uninvited” two Chinese dissidents from that pre-Fair symposium (leading to the Book Fair’s series of denials and apologies). As they report it, Ripken also kept those same two dissidents from speaking at the book fair’s […]
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Sub rights director at FSG and Holt Denise Cronin will move over to become directior of sub rights for the Random House Publishing Group in November. At Dial Press, Noah Eker has been promoted to editor. Michael Healy has officially stepped down from his post as executive director of the Book Industry Study Group (where he was working half-time) to work full-time on preparations to establish the Book Rights Registry.
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At Penguin Canada, editor Nicole Winstanley will take over as publisher as president David Davidar takes on additional responsibilities as ceo of Penguin International. The unit will also launch an Allen Lane Canada imprint in 2010, with Diane Turbide running the new nonfiction program as publishing director. Managing director Andrea Magyar will give up most of her editorial responsibilities to become vp of business development. Focusing on custom publishing opportunities, she’ll report directly to Davidar. Speaking of imprints, at last week’s Bouchercon Little, Brown publisher Michael Pietsch mentioned briefly that the house is working on a new crime fiction imprint. […]
The Jon Karp Interview
Jofie Ferrari-Adler’s series of interviews with agents and editors continues with Jon Karp at Twelve. “I don’t think it’s right for me to get up on my soapbox and say that my way is the best way. What I do think is that the Twelve model makes a great deal of sense for unknown authors or authors who want to break out.” He adds: “I think that a majority of the projects that are acquired by major houses never have a chance of breaking through. They are flawed in their conception. What I learned from Ann Godoff was to be […]
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Lonely Planet has hired John Boris as managing director for the Americas. He was svp of marketing and interactive for Zagat’s. In a piece about the company, All Things Digital cites new ceo Matt Goldberg reporting that “Lonely Planet’s digital businesses have doubled their revenues to $20 million this year via premium pricing and advertising.” Lonely Planet was an early and successful player in building an online community of their fans/customers (including 700,000 registered members in their Thorn Tree community.) Among their digital initiatives, Goldberg cites “500,000 downloads from around 70 premium-priced apps” on various mobile platforms. ATD says, “While […]