Personnel News and Features The election has trumped most industry news today, but there is always more to report from the deal and job fronts. (As noted yesterday, our own small bit of job news is that we’ve added an RSS feed to our thriving Job Board; if you know what that means, just go to the job board page to add it to your RSS aggregator of choice.) Larry Zilavy will leave his post as evp of corporate finance and strategic planning at Barnes & Noble “to devote more time to his personal investments and philanthropic interests.” His responsibilities […]

Tenet Sale Coming Soon, with Other Agents In the Wings Former CIA director George Tenet has wrapped up a couple of weeks of meetings with publishers, guided by attorney Bob Barnett, and an auction for rights is likely to begin next week or the week after. Sources indicate 12 publishers (or imprints) are interested in the project, and informal reports from Tenet’s meetings indicate that he made a strong impression and intends to write a candid book that will look both at his service — under both Democratic and Republican presidents — during difficult and historic times, as well as […]

Riggio Says Customers Don’t Read Political Books, They Just Buy Them Barnes & Noble chairman Len Riggio provides a pre-election report in the NYT Op-ed column today. We always suspected that the buying of inflammatory political books is more like voting than reading, which he confirms: “Informal polls taken by our store managers indicate that some 70 percent of our customers say they have no intention of reading these books; 15 percent say they will; and 15 percent are undecided.” He also claims that, “Liberal books sell at lower price points, and especially in paperback, while conservative books sell mostly […]

Another Plot to Change America Penguin’s Riverhead imprint has acquired a book that tantalizingly hints at what it calls a thwarted “plot to disrupt the presidential election.” But like the missing explosives in Iraq, the full details of this story may well not emerge until long after the election is history, with publication not scheduled until fall of next year. Author Larry J. Kolb promises to reveal the full details of a sensational case in which he says one American citizen has already been arrested, with the other still being sought by law enforcement authorities. The men, both described as […]

Tillinghast to Retire Again from AMS Charles Tillinghast will step down from his interim return as CEO of Advanced Marketing Services, making way for the ascension of Bruce C. Myers to the top post on November 12. Myers joined the company’s staff in April as evp and CFO, at the same time as Tillinghast returned to management following the firing of Mike Nicita. Tillinghast will remain as a consultant for two years but will give up his seat on the company’s board of directors. Company release More Personnel News Talia Ross has joined Holtzbrinck as library marketing manager, running a […]

Online Territorial Expansion for Amazon and Abe Amazon UK will run an online bookstore for Borders’ fast-growing UK operation-just as the two companies work together in the US. It’s the first deal like this for Amazon UK since their 2001 partnership with Waterstone’s. Reuters item Abebooks.com has acquired Iberlibro.com, which they call “the most important online platform for used and antiquarian books in the global Spanish-speaking community.” Iberlibro is a network of almost 300 booksellers from 15 countries. Founder Adolfo Pisa says in a statement, “Iberlibro has an intimate knowledge of the Spanish used and antiquarian book market, and Abebooks […]