Used Books Become Newer Every Day, To Many Publishers’ Dismay Days before Bill Clinton’s My Life went on sale last month, a handful of shrewd and Internet-savvy book buyers were auctioning off their copies of this “rare” edition on eBay – and promising to ship the book the day it hit store shelves. That number…Continue Reading
People June was a relatively quiet month, though that doesn’t guarantee a quiet summer, judging from the increase of job listings on industry job boards and murmurings around town: Harold Augenbraum is leaving The Mercantile Library to become Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, effective July 12. A search committee has been formed to…Continue Reading
PEOPLE Changes in the far-flung HarperCollins realm: Carl Raymond has left ReganBooks to go to DK as Director of Marketing. Claudia Riemer Boutote has joined HarperSanFrancisco as Senior Director of Publicity. She was most recently at Workman as Marketing and Publicity Director. In New York, Mimi Kayden has been named Marketing Consultant at HarperCollins Children’s…Continue Reading
While many university presses have embarked on a soul-searching jag as they try to reconcile their lofty mandates with low-life financial reality, the folks at Harvard Business School Press appear anything but confused. “We are not a university press,” says David Goehring, newly appointed VP and Director of HBS Press. “You could say we’re a…Continue Reading
PEOPLE November brought some big moves in the industry, with Bill Barry going to DK as President, after a hiatus of two years (he had been at Hungry Minds when it was sold to Wiley) and Jim Jordan, Director of the Johns Hopkins University Press moving to Columbia University Press as President and Director (as…Continue Reading
With trusty correspondents fanned out over the big-box landscape this October, word comes back that while bestsellers and brand names are alive and well, who controls those brands varies depending on the venue. At Sam’s Club, for instance, the publisher of record for Williams-Sonoma is Simon & Schuster (The Williams-Sonoma Collection), while at Costco, it’s…Continue Reading
PEOPLE John Kilcullen, previously CEO of Hungry Minds, has been named President of VNU’s Music and Literary Group and Publisher of Billboard. He will also oversee Bookseller and Kirkus Reviews, Music & Media, and Airplay Monitor. As dissected daily in the NYT, Daniel Menaker was named SVP and Editor-in-Chief of the Random House editorial imprints….Continue Reading
PEOPLE Paul Gottlieb has been named Executive Director of the Aperture Foundation. He leaves Abrams after 22 years, during which time he held the titles of Publisher, President, CEO, and most recently, Company Director and Vice Chairman of the La Martiniere Groupe. He begins August 1. Brigitte Weeks is leaving Guideposts to become Vice President…Continue Reading
Advance publicity for this year’s Toy Fair generated all the thrill of a wet blanket, with announcements rolling in from industry giants Mattel and Hasbro that their presence at the 98-year-old show will be significantly notched down in 2002. As talk of “downsizing” and “retrenching” swirled in the press, we were also treated to the…Continue Reading
Are Bulked-Up Book Distributors The Industry’s Next Goliaths? Time was, you would call a guy like Gilbert Perlman a book distributor. The warehouse, the sales staff, the publishing clients, even the name on the door — Client Distribution Services — all fit the modus operandi of firms schlepping books from the presses to the masses….Continue Reading
