Borders Hires One from BN Borders has recruited Jessica Harley as their vp, acquisition and retention marketing, which includes responsibility for the Borders Rewards program. She was at Barnes & Noble for the past three years, as director of promotions. Chief marketing officer Michael Tam says, “With Jessica’s leadership, we intend to maximize the customer data available within the Borders Rewards program through segmented and highly targeted marketing aligned with our customers’ interests. Ultimately, we will become even more valuable to our customers and be more effective as a retailer.” Release Separately, New Zealand prepares for the opening of their […]

On Second Thought, Don’t Tell Crown has pulled back on another high-profile acquisition, deciding not to go forward with Melissa Dumas’ LIVE TO TELL: My Life as Madonna’s Nanny, which had been pre-empted in a major deal. The house simply says “it will not be publishing the memoir to be authored by Madonna’s former nanny, Melissa Dumas. The rights to the book have been released to the author, who is represented by Martin Literary Management.” Sharlene Martin says, “I deeply regret that Crown decided not to move forward in publishing Melissa Dumas’ book. I had a wonderful experience with them […]

12 Million That’s how many copies Scholastic plans to print of HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS. The promotional campaign will begin April 17. Release Pinter’s New Home Former Crown editor Jason Pinter will join St. Martin’s as an editor on March 26. He will continue to acquire commercial fiction — thrillers and mysteries — as well as nonfiction in pop culture and other categories. Time Stays Hachette Book Group USA has renewed their sales and distribution contract with their former corporate brethren at Time Inc Home Entertainment. The line “ships close to 1.8 million books annually.” Tenet Due Date […]

Waterstone’s Still Looking for a Working Model Waterstone’s still can’t pull it together. Parent company HMV reported that same-store sales at the bookstore chain withered by another 6.1 percent for the nine weeks ending March 10 (and bear in mind that at this point, the comparison is to weak results a year ago — the bar gets lower and lower, and they remain well under it.) New CEO Simon Fox announced a plan that seems to have little or nothing to do with being a better bookseller. But in his own words, “The three-year transformation plan which I will outline […]

Personnel News Children’s publishing veteran David Ford has returned to London to set up book packaging and literary consulting firm Brubaker & Ford, in conjunction with magazine and marketing executive Brett Brubaker. (They will maintain a NY office as well.) They aim to “create books intimate in creation, but vast in sales potential.” Aside from the basics, they say “we provide publishers with marketing insight and plans to take each project beyond the initial sale, creating websites and wide-reaching appeal for every book we create.” Ford had been publisher of Little, Brown Children’s until 2005, after leading the US launch […]

FICTION Debut Brendan McNally’s GERMANIA,  a first novel about the last days of the Third Reich, when Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect and friend, embarks on a foolhardy rebellion, aided by a former child star turned enemy assassin, ending up in Flensburg, where the surviving Nazis lose themselves in dreams of a bright and impossible future, to Colin Fox at Simon & Schuster, in a good deal, by Larry Weissman at Larry Weissman Literary (world). Susan White’s BOUND SOUTH, in which three women struggle to find their place in contemporary Atlanta, examining race, class, gender, and religion in a land where […]