News and opinion on the changing world of book publishing
Laura Hazard Owen | April 2009
Despite its sale by the Bertelsmann Group to Najafi Companies last year, Bookspan’s 21 book clubs (including Book-of-the-Month Club, Doubleday Book Club, Quality Paperback Club, and Literary Guild) still exist. Given the company’s tumultuous past few years, how has it held up? (For news on other book clubs, click here.) Numbers don’t mean everything, but [...]
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Laura Hazard Owen |
Say “book clubs” today and most people think Oprah and Twitter. (Yes, Twitter: Picador recently announced its new 140-character book club. Followers will be able to correspond with the featured books’ authors and editors and win free copies of the books.) But once upon a time, book club members didn’t win free books on Twitter; [...]
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Laura Hazard Owen | February 2009
It’s hard to remember a time when Netflix didn’t seem like a good idea. The company opened its first distribution center, in San Jose, CA, in 1998, and initially aimed to create the typical Blockbuster experience: Each rental was $4, plus $2 for postage, and there were late fees. In a 2002 interview with Wired [...]
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December 2008
PEOPLE Hachette Book Group has hired Kenneth Michaels as Chief Operating Officer. He succeeds Beth Ford, who left in September, and will join the company on January 5. He was most recently SVP of Global Business Process Management for the McGraw-Hill Companies. Marie Coolman will join Hyperion as Executive Director of Publicity, taking over the [...]
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October 2007
PEOPLE The big news this month was the long-anticipated promotion of Carolyn Reidy to the position of President & CEO of S&S, following Jack Romanos‘ retirement announcement. Following that move, Michael Selleck has been promoted to the newly created position of EVP, Sales and Marketing for S&S Inc.. He was SVP Sales & Marketing for [...]
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June 2007
PEOPLE Susan Reich is re-joining PGW where she had worked as VP Marketing from 1990 to 1995, in the role of President. Most recently she served as the President and COO of Avalon Publishing Group, one of PGW’s clients. She reports to David Steinberger. Reporting directly to Reich are Kevin Votel, Eric Kettunen, Roaxanne Schwartz, [...]
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May 2007
PEOPLE Carl Raymond has been recruited by Scholastic’s Trade president, Lisa Holton, to the newly created position of Director of New Media Projects. He was most recently Adult Publishing Director of DK. HarperCollins Group President Brian Murray announced that Joe Tessitore, President of Collins since 2004, will retire from full-time publishing by November 1. In [...]
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March 2007
PEOPLE Sales was where the action was this past month, with big changes at Random House, S&S, Abrams and elsewhere. Mary Wowk, Director of World Wide Sales at Black Dog & Leventhal, has been appointed VP, Sales of HNA, which includes Abrams, STC and distributed lines. In a separate announcement, Katrina Weidknecht has been appointed [...]
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January 2007
PEOPLE On December 15, two hundred and fifteen years after the Bill of Rights was ratified (in case you had lost perspective), Judith Regan was dismissed from HarperCollins. Maureen Egen, Deputy Chairman and Publisher of the Hachette Book Group USA, will step down from those roles January 1 and will leave the company by the [...]
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December 2006
PEOPLE November has been a month of moves, the most talked about being Riverhead Co-Publishers Julie Grau and Cindy Spiegel move from Penguin to Doubleday and the subsequent promotion of Sean McDonald to Executive Editor. He was previously Senior Editor and Online Creative Director. HarperCollins announced Justin Loeber has been appointed SVP, Executive Director of [...]
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