After All That, Karp Leaves Random House As we posted to our home page around 2 yesterday afternoon, now covered in many a venue: Editor-in-chief for the Random House imprints Jonathan Karp is leaving the company, having told publisher Gina Centrello “he wants the chance to take on bigger and broader book publishing challenges, outside the RH publishing group.” His position will not be filled; instead, editors at Random House and Villard who had reported to Karp now once again report straight to group executive editor-in-chief Daniel Menaker. Kate Medina, Bob Loomis, Jane von Mehren and Linda Marrow continue to […]
Lunch for Wednesday, June 8
Shriver’s Orange Triumph Lionel Shriver gets press all over for winning the 10th Orange Prize for fiction by a woman, for her novel WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN. She comments: “On some kind of sneaky, subterranean level, I thought I was going to win. I have been very ambitious from the start on this prize. I wanted it. I wanted it badly.” The selection is touted as a victory for smaller publishers; Serpent’s Tail is her UK publisher, and Perseus’s Counterpoint published the book in the US. BBC Runaway Book Proposal Lloyd Grove says: “Fresh from copping a plea […]
Lunch for Tuesday, June 7
Audible in Satellite Radio Deal In the fast-moving digital audio landscape, Audible has announced an agreement with satellite radio provider XM. The radio company will broadcast a new Audible audiobook program comprising “features, interviews, and news” about audiobooks, and Audible will offer XM programs for download through its service. In 2006, they’ll launch portable, handheld satellite radio devices that can also download and play Audible’s content. Release Serial Puts Klein’s Clinton Back in News The July Vanity Fair also has an excerpt from Ed Klein’s forthcoming book about Hillary Clinton, though the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz finds it “less than […]
Lunch for Monday, June 6
Rolling Back Like many of you, I suspect, I didn’t catch the full license plate of the truck that just hit me, but I’m certain of the first three letters.… BEA reports abound — on paper, wire service, and blog. In our skewed viewpoint they all reinforce the idea that this very big and busy convention was particularly absent many discernible “news stories.” This year’s show certainly confirmed the ineluctable logic of having a show in New York regularly — considered heresy when we suggested it not too long ago — even though the Javits center is a “dump,” as […]
BEA Lunch for Saturday, June 4
Another Busy Day Stretched thin (like many a convention-goer) across a string of events, panels, conversations, and our own booth, today’s effort at coverage gets necessarily more idiosyncratic and personal. In one sense, the highlight of our own day was clear: our enthusiastic children’s book reviewer Jonah (of Jonah’s Picks) fulfilled a longtime dream in meeting, and having a long and rich conversation with, his literary hero/favorite author Christopher Paolini. Paolini was signing in the autographing area yesterday (and one of the authors aboard Random House’s cruise at night), as the Random booth was stripped clean of ELDEST promotional materials. […]
BEA Lunch for Friday, June 3
Which is More Surprising? If at the beginning of the week we had told you that Deep Throat would be revealed, Steve Riggio would call on publishers to raise retail prices, and Oprah would recommend that her viewers read three books (As I Lay Dying; The Sound and the Fury; and Light in August) by William Faulkner, which would you have believed the least? Thus the bar has been set unimaginably high for anything on the show floor to provide us with a large measure of surprise. One Covers a Show The transparent emphasis here is on one more than […]