Laura Hazard Owen | April 2009
Unlike the atmosphere at SXSW, the mood at the 2009 Publishing Business Conference & Expo was a bit subdued. It might have been the chilly New York weather or the beige Marriott Marquis carpeting—or maybe it was the panels reflecting the current state of the publishing industry, with titles like “Book Publishing and the New [...]
PEOPLE
A surprising number of higher profile industry folk moved around this month. The one that garnered the most ink was Jon Karp, who left Random House for — to hear people tell it — any number of places. Bill Barry left DK to return to Doubleday, as Publisher of the religious imprints. [...]
Facing ‘Oblivion,’ University Presses
Rally ‘Round New Distribution Models
Deep in a dark closet in the bowels of the University of Chicago Press’ main building resides whatmay be the answer to all university presses’ distribution woes. On a computer server, dubbed the BiblioVault, sit 5,000 books in digital format from close to 30 [...]
Book View
People
May was another busy month for publishers’ human resource directors: Michael Jacobs has gone to Abrams as CEO. He was most recently SVP of Scholastic’s trade division. In addition, Ron Longe has been named Director of Publicity for STC, also part of the Martinière Group. He was most recently [...]
With Academic Sales Dwindling, University Presses Target the Trade Market
With “tectonic changes” rocking the university press empyrean — a withering library market which once scooped up 750 copies of just about every title; steadily shrinking subventions; plunging public funding; and redlining revenues that, one director says, “keep going through lower [...]
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 [...]
PEOPLE
Bonnie Ammer has been named to the newly created position of EVP, Publisher at Large, Random House Worldwide, reporting directly to Peter Olson. Her current job as Publisher, Fodor’s Travel Publications, and President, Random House Information Group, will be assumed by David Naggar, who will continue as President, Random House Audio [...]