At Little, Brown Children’s, Dave Caplan has been hired as senior art director. He was art director at Harper Children’s. Bethany Brown is joining the Cadence Group’s newly-opened Chicago office as a senior associate, heading the Editorial Division as well as consulting with small to mid-sized publishers on editorial and workflow processes, contracts and acquisitions. Brown had been in the editorial department at Sourcebooks (and prior to that Adams Media), before going to work as a consultant. Rawi Hage’s COCKROACH, already in contention for the Giller Prize, now has a shot at Canada’s Governor General’s Award as well, with the […]
E and Free
Open-source college textbook company Flat World Knowledge announced the completion of $700,000 funding round, bringing total funding to date to $1.4 million. They say they expect “a larger Series A round from venture investors and/or strategic partners within the next six months.” In beta for the past few months, Flat World expects to have its national commercial launch in time for the 2009 spring semester. They are building their sales and marketing team, which now includes Sharon Koch as marketing director. (She was director of marketing for a division of Prentice Hall/Pearson Education.) And former Simon & Schuster ceo Jonathan […]
Frankfurt Stats
According to organizers of the Frankfurt Book Fair, every day at the show as busier than last year (though indeed the opening day, Wednesday, was the quietest of all). For the first three trade-only days they show visitors of: 10/15: 46,108 (+ 1.76 % to 2007)10/16: 58,772 (+ 2,4 %)10/17: 53,146 (+ 3,1%) And for the final two days, when the German public can attend: 10/18: 78.218 (+ 8.1%, and a new record total) 10/19: 62.868 (+ 11%)
Nurnberg and Freese Return–Together
Former Sterling publisher Charlie Nurnberg has announced his new company, Imagine Publishing, which will launch in fall 2009. The company aims to publish “books that inspire, educate and ‘edutain'” covering “a multitude of subjects including science and nature, music and art, sports and reference, and the magic of knowledge.” Musician Peter Yarrow is setting up a Peter Yarrow books imprint “bringing music and its magic to children the world over.” Nurnberg had published Yarrow’s book version of Puff the Magic Dragon. The first book in this line will be folk musician Tom Paxton’s THE MARVELOUS TOY. The first adult list […]
Literary Agent Kavanagh Dies
Renowned agent Pat Kavanagh (and wife of author Julian Barnes) has died. A spokesperson from United Agents, the firm that Kavanagh helped to form after leaving PFD last year, said: “Pat Kavanagh was an exceptional agent and a great friend. We all owe her a tremendous amount. She was an extraordinary presence who was much loved and will be greatly missed by her colleagues and her clients. All our thoughts are with Julian at this difficult time.”
Redstone's Trouble Runs Deep; Margin Call for Scholastic's Robinson
The financial world continues to speculate on just how deep Sumner Redstone’s cash squeeze will strike. On Friday his privately-held National Amusements said it “is engaged in constructive discussions with its bank group and noteholders regarding a covenant issue under National Amusement’s debt, which is unsecured.” They blamed “recent unprecedented market volatility which led to a precipitous drop in the value of the CBS and Viacom shares.” “Sources close to Redstone and Viacom say the executive’s current cash situation is so dire that selling Viacom or CBS – which he also controls – is now a real possibility. Redstone used […]