The former editor and agent died earlier this month at home in Charlottesville, VA. Working at Macmillan in 1969, she offered a $2,000 advance for the “much-rejected” Jonathan Livingston Seagull. “In 1974 Ms. Friede was offered her own imprint at Delacorte Press, where she continued to publish flying books as well as works by writers like Françoise Sagan, Jorge Amado and Hugh Downs. In the early 1980s, after Doubleday acquired Delacorte, she started Eleanor Friede Books, a literary agency.”NYT
Personnel News
Geoffrey Stone has joined Running Press as an editor, focusing on the cookbook program. He was editor-in-chief at Rutledge Hill/Thomas Nelson. Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing has hired Renee Huff as associate marketing manager, mass market. Outgoing Hartford Courant books editor Carole Goldberg posts at the BBCC blog: “It was a privilege to be books editor here…. But perhaps the best part of the job was reading and reviewing authors who were not so well-known, but have tremendous talent…. I will spend some time on Cape Cod and then hope to recast myself as a freelance reviewer, primarily for the […]
AAP Reschedules for November
The AAP’s annual meeting for Smaller and Independent Publishers, abruptly scrubbed right before BEA due to light publisher interest, has been rescheduled in New York on November 7 at the Scholastic auditorium. Still called Starting….Growing…Maturing….How to Successfully Navigate the Life Cycles of an Independent Publishing House, the program features many of the same speakers and panels originally lined up for the pre-BEA meeting.
Wood Words
Much has been written already about James Wood’s just-released HOW FICTION WORKS, and how it might shape writers present and future. Already Wood himself has weighed in on different venues to explain how his views have been mischaracterized, so you can only guess where this will lead from here. One can imagine that all good and bad writing going forward will be laid at his feet by someone. Writing in a NY Mag comments field about their take on an article in the Observer about his book, Wood says: “I must respond to the nonsense above: my new book is […]
Sony Reader Will Open Up to ePub
Starting today Sony is offering a software upgrade to the newer edition of their Reader that will let it render books in ePub format. That means that other retailers can sell files for the Reader, opening it up beyond Sony’s own online store and the recent offering from Borders.com. And it should add considerably to the number of titles available for the Reader, currently at about 45,000 books. As svp of consumer product marketing for Sony Electronics Steve Haber says, “This upgrade opens the door to a whole host of paid and free content from third-party e-book stores, Web sites and […]
Scholastic Finishes Soft, Will Continue "Headcount Reduction"
Scholastic reported a soft fourth quarter, with sales from continuing operations of $536.1 million, down 2 percent, and higher operating costs and expenses that left earnings from continuing operations down substantially (by a third) at $49 million. Overall, they had a net loss for the quarter of $13.1 million. (Losses from the direct-to-home continuities business–which it is selling–and the school-based continuities business–which it closed in May–show up on the balance sheet as losses from non-continuing operations now.) Those results missed analysts’ expectations 6 cents a share on earnings and $16 million on sales. For the full year, which included the […]