Bernard Moves On, Saletan Moves Up; New Boss for Penguin UK; and More Personnel News Harcourt Adult publisher Andre Bernard is leaving after ten years at the company to become vice president of the Guggenheim Foundation. Editor-in-chief Becky Saletan, who joined the house two years ago, will take over Bernard’s role as publisher. Also at Harcourt, Peter Horan has joined the company as a publicist, after two years at St. Martin’s. In the UK, Penguin finally will have a dedicated operational executive again. Peter Field, who runs Penguin and Pearson in Australia, is moving to London as chief executive of […]

UC System May Join Google Library Program The University of California is considering joining other academic libraries participating in the library program of Google Book Search, with the board of regents discussing the possibilities at a meeting last week. As the Daily Californian reports, the UC system has over 34 million books that “could be eligible for digitization” under such a program. UC is already a participant in the Open Content Alliance project, which covers just public domain titles, but “books bound by copyright currently make up about 75 to 80 percent of UC collections.” UC director for library planning […]

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Vrai Pynchon The description of Thomas Pynchon’s forthcoming novel AGAINST THE DAY referred to in Slate yesterday, pulled down from Amazon’s official product page but preserved by a site visitor on Amazon’s discussion board, is indeed by the author, confirmed by Tracy Locke at Penguin Press. Locke adds that the Slate piece incorrectly claimed she “disavowed all knowledge” of the post. “I explained to Troy Patterson that I was unaware that any sort of book description had been posted on Amazon and that I’d not seen it — and therefore could not comment on its accuracy.” Amazon’s Sean Sundwall tells […]

A Flat Quarter for Scholastic Scholastic announced flat sales for their fourth quarter ($334 million in the children’s book publishing and distribution, even with a year ago, and $601 million overall, up $9 million from last year) and lower profits, with net income of $38 million, versus $43 million a year ago. Sales for fiscal 2007 are projected to drop from this year’s $2.28 billion (which included last year’s new Harry Potter) to between $2.1 and $2.2 billion. Total Potter revenue for 2006 was $195 million, up from $20 million the year before. Press Release Uh Oh: Jones’ Idea of […]

Germany’s Continuing Hit The Guardian highlights German bestseller MEASURING THE WORLD, which has sold 600,000 copies in hardcover since last September, “nothing less than a literary sensation.… It hasn’t just delighted the readers. It has also enthralled Germany’s famously grudging critics, who have swooningly praised the novel and hailed its author – 31-year-old Daniel Kehlmann – as a literary wunderkind.” Quercus will publish in the UK next year. Guardian Fox Goes Graphic It’s Comic-Con time, and so the related press releases shall flow. Fox Filmed Entertainment’s Fox Atomic will create a line of graphic novels, to be published by corporate […]