Wylie O’Sullivan has been promoted to senior editor at Free Press, where she started in 2001 as an editorial assistant. Christina Biamonte will join Sony’s Digital Reading Business Division as new Content Account Manager, eBooks. She has been Subsidiary Rights Manager at Houghton Mifflin. At Sony, she will forge new publisher relationships and act as relationship manager for existing publishing partners. On Tuesday, Zondervan laid off 30 employees as part of a “streamlining [of] our operations,” with a total workforce of 374 people. At the same time, the company is hiring for its digital and multimedia operations, with the Grand […]
How Do You Solve A Problem Like Annual Publication Stats?
Yesterday afternoon Bowker issued their annual estimates of new books published in the US during 2009 that carried ISBNs. Titles produced via offset printing were essentially flat at an estimated 288,355. (That’s marginally lower than 2008’s 289,729, but keep in mind that this time last year, the 2008 estimate was only 275,000.) The number getting attention is their tabulation of 764,448 titles “that fall outside Bowker’s traditional publishing and classification definitions.” That’s nearly three times the 271,851 “nontraditional” titles from 2008. There are a number of details and issues of context worth examining here. For starters, in exchange for being […]
The London Book Fair Versus Icelandic Ash
In previous year’s the London Book Fair has faced down potential disruptions from phantom transit strikes to their own disastrous one-year relocation to the periphery of London. This year’s obstacle–important for anyone expecting to fly in to London–is volcanic ash spread from an eruption in Iceland. British air traffic authorities have banned all non-emergency flights until at least 2 AM Eastern time Friday (or 6 Greenwich Mean Time). Unfortunately the AP notes, “in a sobering comment, one scientist in Iceland said the ejection of volcanic ash — and therefore disruptions in air travel — could continue for days or even […]
It's Not PC, But Making Tinkers Was My Idea
A lot of people have claims to helping “make” Paul Harding’s TINKERS work in the marketplace. The Boston Globe has a nice piece on the topic, though in mangling the chronology of things they confuse the record as much as clarify. And we’re still looking for the independent booksellers who helped recognize Tinkers was special early on, along with Bellevue’s distributor Consortium, to spotlight their roles even further. So here’s a little bit of a timeline: * As we first read in the Wall Street Journal, it was Jonathan Rabinowitz at Turtle Point Press who passed the manuscript to Erika […]
Guggenheim Recognizes Harding, Too
Yesterday the Guggenheim named its 180 new fellowships, and Paul Harding makes their list as well. Some of the other authors receiving support also include Adam Begley, Tom Bissell, Ethan Canin, Anthony Doerr, Nell Freudenberger, Philip Gourevitch, Jonathan Harr, Molly Haskell, Colum McCann, Joseph O’Neil, Salvatore Scibona, and Monique Truong.Full fellows
People and More
At Scribner Anna deVries has been promoted to associate editor. Georgia Cool will join Mary Evans Inc. as an agent on April 19. In addition to developing her own list, she will oversee foreign rights for the agency. She has been assistant editor at Farrar, Straus and, prior to that, was at William Morris Endeavor Entertainment. John Rudolph‘s position as executive editor at Putnam Children’s was eliminated with the arrival of Jennifer Besser and he was laid off. He can be reached at: jrwr123@yahoo.com. Though some publishers are having trouble reaching Apple to try to make arrangements to sell directly […]