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FROM PUBLISHING TRENDS (APRIL 2008)

PEOPLE
More changes at (Harper)Collins: Caroline Sutton will be joining the Lifestyle/Wellness imprint of the Collins Division as Executive Editor, beginning April 14. She was Executive Editor at Ballantine. Executive Editor Toni Sciarra has left the Lifestyle and Wellness imprint and may be reached at tonionemail@yahoo.com or (212) 628-4072. In an unrelated move, Adam Bellow has been hired as VP, Executive Editor. Bellow comes from Doubleday, where he worked on an editor-at-large basis.

Karen Rinaldi, President of Bloomsbury USA, has been named SVP, General Manager and Publishing Director of Rodale Books, after a long search. She reports directly to Rodale CEO Steve Murphy. Rinaldi is the third senior person to leave Bloomsbury this year, following Publishing Director Annik LaFarge and Executive Editor Gillian Blake (who went to Collins last month). In the wake of her departure, Colin Dickerman has been named Publisher. He has hired Anton Mueller as Executive Editor. Mueller was laid off from Houghton Mifflin in the aftermath of the merger with Harcourt.

Following B&N’s decision to halt Sparknotes’ book publishing program, Spark Publisher Robert Riger has left the company. He may be reached at rpriger@gmail.com. Roy Levenson, who was VP Finance and Operations at Spark’s parent division under Alan Kahn, has been appointed VP, Finance, to provide financial and analytic support for the magazine Web sites for Rodale Inc. He reports to Howard Weill, SVP, Finance and Operations, who recently came to Rodale from Bertelsmann Direct North America.
Lisa Sharkey has announced that Adam Korn has joined the Creative Development Team at HarperCollins as Senior Editor. Korn was previously an editor at the Crown Publishing Group, following editorial stints at the Random House Publishing Group and Kensington Publishing Corporation.
Patty Berg, who was Director of Marketing at Harcourt, will join the Crown Publishing Group as Marketing Director for Crown, Crown Business, Crown Forum, Harmony, and Shaye Areheart Books. She reports to Philip Patrick along with Donna Passannante, who was just named Marketing Director for Clarkson Potter, Potter Craft, Potter Style, and Three Rivers Press. Also, Suzanne O’Neill will be joining Crown as a Senior Editor. She had been at Atria Books.

Mary Marotta is joining S&S as VP, Director of Children’s Sales, a newly created position. She was most recently Director of National Accounts at Scholastic. Meanwhile, Joanne Ruelos has joined Scholastic as Senior Editor, Licensed Publishing. She had been a senior editor at McGraw-Hill. Scholastic also announced the appointment of Michael Hansen as EVP of the Company and President of Book Fairs and International. Hansen, who has served as President and CEO of Harcourt Assessment, Inc. since 2006, will join the Management Executive Committee and will report to Richard Robinson, Chairman, President and CEO of Scholastic. Alan Boyko, President of Scholastic Book Fairs, remains in that role and will report to Hansen. Hugh Roome has been named to a new position of President of Consumer and Professional Publishing and will continue to operate Scholastic consumer and professional magazines, Quality Education Data (QED), and Scholastic Marketing Partners.

Andrea Sheehan is joining the Random House Publishing Group as VP, Director, Digital Strategy and Business Develop-ment, reporting to Gina Centrello, starting on May 5. She was previously VP, Director of Online Sales and Merchandis-ing at S&S.

Andrews McMeel’s Accord division has hired Paula Hannigan as children’s editor, based in Denver. She was an editor at Klutz.

Jesse Cohen has become Director of Development at the Metropolitan Opera Guild. He was most recently at the Alfred Sloan Foundation and had previously worked for Atlas Editions. He may be reached at (212) 769-7025 or jcohen@metguild.org.

Elizabeth Fabian returns to Random House after four years at Harcourt. She now joins the ad/promo team as Senior Manager, Advertising and Promotions, RHPG.

Eileen Johnson, formerly of Kaplan Publishing and Thomson Learning, has joined Agate Publishing as EVP, Global Sales.

Former PW Publisher David Nudo is going to work for Shelfari as Director of Sales and Marketing. Prior to PW, Nudo worked at the New York Times.

Brigitte Weeks has been named Editor-in-Chief of Bertelsmann Direct’s Crossings Book Club. Weeks worked twice before at Bookspan, most recently as SVP and Editor-in-Chief. She also held the same title at Guideposts.

Signe Pike has joined Plume as Editor, replacing Allison Dickens; she was at Ballantine.

PROMOTIONS
At Crown, Rachel Klayman has been promoted from Senior Editor to Executive Editor. She joined the company in 2003. . . . Patrick Mulligan has been promoted to Editor at Gotham Books. . . . Namrata Tripathi has been promoted to Senior Editor, from Editor, at Hyperion Books for Children. . . . Kara Sargent has been promoted to Editorial Director for Simon Spotlight and Simon Scribbles.

Heather Fain has been promoted from Publicity Director to VP Marketing Director at Little, Brown, taking over duties from Sophie Cottrell, who has moved to the position of Hachette’s new VP Director Corporate Communications, following April Hattori’s swift departure.

Simon Tepas has moved over to the new position of backlist sales manager at Scholastic. He has been with the company since 2005.

Tom Russell at Random’s Information Publishing Group announced the promotion of Chris Warnasch from Editorial Director of Living Language to Publishing Director of Living Language. Suzie Sisoler has taken on the role of Director, Online Consumer Marketing at HarperCollins. She joined HarperCollins in 2000 and spent five years as an Online Marketing Manager for the General Books Group.

UPCOMING EVENTS
The Virtual Worlds Conference takes place Thursday and Friday, April 3 and 4 at the Javits Center. Scholastic, Alloy and many children’s entertainment companies will be in attendance, along with magazines (Time, the New Yorker), TV networks (MTV) and digital players (Google, SimGame, etc.). For more details, go to www.virtualworlds2008.com.
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The American Studies Program at Columbia University and the Library of America, in collaboration with the National Book Foundation, present a 75th Birthday Tribute to Philip Roth. The tribute will feature a panel composed of Jonathan Lethem, Nathan Englander, and Charles D’Ambrosio discussing Roth’s work and its influence on their writing, moderated by Judith Thurman. Writers and critics will discuss their favorite Roth books, as well as his career, and Joel Conarroe will moderate this discussion. The event will culminate with special remarks by Philip Roth. Friday, April 11, 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. at the Miller Theatre, Columbia University, 2960 Broadway (at 116th Street).
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On Friday and Saturday, April 11 and 12, the Fourth Annual New York Round Table® Writers’ Conference, hosted by the NY Center for Independent Publishing, takes place, featuring Joshua Ferris, Charles Bock, John Berendt, Alice Hoffman, and Lincoln Child. For information, visit www.writersconferencenyc.org.
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The fourth annual PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature will take place in New York from Tuesday, April 29 through Sunday, May 4. Ian McEwan, Joyce Carol Oates, Jeffrey Eugenides, Michael Ondaatje, Bernard-Henri Levy, and Mia Farrow are among the participants. The 2008 Festival schedule (available in full at www.pen.org) will feature “over 100 of the world’s most gifted writers in 82 events around New York City and in the newly added satellite cities of Albany, Rochester, and Boston,” according to the press release. Some of the anchoring events of this year’s Festival include the Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture, which will be delivered by Umberto Eco; the Three Musketeers United, a night of readings by Salman Rushdie, Umberto Eco, and Mario Vargas Llosa; and the return of last year’s PEN Cabaret, this year taking place at Webster Hall and including dancer Bill T. Jones, who will perform a piece inspired by the poems of Dylan Thomas.
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Book Industry Study Group (BISG)’s fifth annual Making Information Pay will take place on May 9 at the McGraw-Hill Auditorium in New York and features, along with speakers from various publishers and retailers, a report on the results of a recent survey on attitudes to experimentation and innovation in U.S. publishing today. For information, go to www.bisg.org.
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Finally, IDPF Spring Educational Conference, Digital Book 2008, will take place on Wednesday, May 14 at the McGraw-Hill Auditorium. This year’s conference will present an update from many eBook market leaders and focus on activities and case studies around the new IDPF .epub Standard and new International and Global Opportunities in the Digital Publishing Space. Information and registration for the conference is available at www.idpf.org/digitalbook08.

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Read other articles from this issue (April 2008 ):

eLusive eStats, Version 2.0

Industry Ink Slingers (chart)

Search Gets Richer, Harder

Storytelling at SXSWi 2008

Bookview

©2008 Publishing Trends