Steve Rubin, former Doubleday Broadway President and Publisher, who began at Bantam Books in 1984 and was most recently Random House Publisher-at-Large, has been named President and Publisher of Henry Holt, reporting to Macmillan CEO John Sargent. Dan Farley will now focus exclusively on his other job as President and Publisher of the recently formed Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group, also reporting to Sargent.

Paul Von Drasek has been named Trade Sales Manager of Capstone Publishers. He was Executive Director of Sales at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Mikyla Bruder has been named Associate Publisher at Timber Press, which was acquired by Workman in 2006. She was previously Executive Editor in the Gift division at Chronicle. Meanwhile, Chronicle announced that former Ten Speed Press Publisher Lorena Jones has taken over as Publishing Director. Jones will begin a digital food and drink publishing program and oversee Chronicle’s food and drink list as a whole. She left Ten Speed in November 2008, prior to Random House’s acquisition of the company.

Former Pantheon Publishing Director Janice Goldklang has joined Globe Pequot Press as Executive Director of Editorial, responsible for all trade programs. Steve Culpepper has the same title and is responsible for the regional travel and outdoor recreation programs.

Crown Executive Editor Heather Jackson announced that, having “thoroughly enjoyed nearly two decades in publishing,” she has resigned in order to “create and produce content in other media, as well as keep a hand on a few editorial projects each year.”

Brendan Cahill has moved to Jane Friedman’s Open Road Integrated Media as VP Publisher. He had been a Senior Editor at Gotham before attending Wharton, where he received his MBA. Most recently, he was at Boston Consulting Group.

Nick Trautwein has been hired as Senior Editor at the New Yorker, succeeding Emily Eakin. He was an editor at the Penguin Press.

Will Pesce, President and CEO, and Steve Smith, EVP and COO, of John Wiley announced the retirement dates and successors for Steve Kippur, EVP and President, Professional/Trade (retirement date July 31, 2010; successor Mark Allin); Eric A. Swanson, SVP, Scientific, Technical, Medical, and Scholarly (retirement date October 31, 2010; successor Steven Miron); and Bonnie Lieberman, SVP & General Manager, Higher Education (retirement date April 30, 2011; successor Joseph S. Heider). Heider will be promoted to the role of VP and COO of global effective May 1, 2010 and will continue to report to Lieberman.

Andrews McMeel has hired Linda Jones as SVP of its calendar and greeting card and Accord Publishing divisions, reporting to CEO Hugh Andrews. Jones was SVP Merchandising at Borders.

Abrams has hired Veronica Wasserman as License and Brand Manager for Children’s and Amulet Books. Wasserman previously worked in the Penguin Children’s licensing department.

Diane Bailey is joining HarperCollins as SVP of Human Resources, replacing Jim Young, who left earlier in the year. She will oversee all Human Resources functions for HarperCollins worldwide and sit on the executive committee. She was most recently at Heineken USA.

George Bick has joined the Doug Grad Literary Agency as an Associate Agent. He was most recently SVP, Director of Sales and Associate Publisher at HarperCollins.

Mary Grey James, a former book buyer for Ingram, has joined East/West Literary Agency as a partner agent. James serves as VP and President-elect of the Women’s National Book Association.

PROMOTIONS AND INTERNAL CHANGES

Simon & Schuster EVP, Operations Dennis Eulau has also been named CFO. Eulau takes over from David England, who has resigned. The company has hired David Byrnes in the new position of VP, Finance and Strategic Planning, reporting to Eulau. Elsewhere at Simon & Schuster, Kerri Kolen and Sarah Hochman have been promoted to the position of Senior Editor.

Ben Sevier has been promoted to Executive Editor at Dutton.

Julie Will has been promoted to Executive Editor at Rodale.

John Freeman, former president of the National Book Critics Circle, has officially been appointed Editor of Granta. He was appointed Acting Editor in May after the departure of Alex Clark and will be based in New York and London. His book The Tyranny of Email was published by Scribner in October.

Alison Donalty has been promoted to Executive Art Director in HarperCollins’s Children’s division. She began at HarperCollins in 1994 as an Assistant Designer.

At Dial Press, Noah Eker has been promoted to Editor.

DULY NOTED

Beginning in March 2010, American Vampire, a comic from Vertigo (DC Comics), will be released each month, including two stories: one by short story writer Scott Snyder and the other by Stephen King. King will write about Skinner Sweet, a bank-robbing, murderous cowboy of the 1880s who becomes a new breed of vampire. Snyder’s half will tell the story of a vampire in America during the 1920s. Both stories will be drawn by Rafael Albuquerque, who will continue the series with Snyder after King’s story ends.

UPCOMING EVENTS

The first Self-Publishing Book Expo will be held Saturday, November 7. The press release quotes Bowker figures claiming that the number of books self-published in 2008 increased 132% over the prior year. With a total of 285,394 titles, on-demand publishing surpassed traditionally published books for the first time. The Expo will feature panels and over 25 exhibitors, including authors, self- publishers, and POD companies, and was created by Diane Mancher and Karen Mender.

The Mercantile Library Center for Fiction honors Gerry Howard and announces the recipient of the First Novel Prize on November 9.

“The Wall in Our Heads,” the 2009 Words Without Borders fundraiser, also takes place on November 9. The evening features readings from the group’s new anthology, The Wall in My Head: Words and Images from the Fall of the Iron Curtain by Paul Auster, Siri Hustvedt, and Peter Schneider. You can buy tickets here.

“Reading in a Digital Age,” a panel discussion moderated by Bill Goldstein and featuring, among others, New York Magazine’s Adam Moss, the NYPL’s Ben Vershbow, and Fourth Story Media’s Lisa Holton, takes place November 11 at CUNY.

Sonny Mehta, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, has been named the 2009 winner of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s Lifetime Achievement Award. The Workshop will hold a cocktail reception and gala dinner in Mehta’s honor on November 13, at At Vermilion. Mehta will receive the award from the Sri Lankan-born Canadian novelist Michael Ondaatje. The dinner marks the beginning of Page Turner: The Inaugural Asian American Literary Festival, a two-day event showcasing award-winning authors reading together at the powerHouse Arena in Dumbo, Brooklyn.

The Independent Booksellers of New York City (IBNYC) unite to celebrate Independent Bookstore Week, “a citywide event highlighting the diverse cultural contributions made by indie bookshops across the five boroughs,” November 15–21. The week will kick off with a party at powerHouse Arena and will conclude on America Unchained Day. A special poster designed by New Yorker cartoonist Bruce McCall will be on display in participating shops and available for sale. The IBNYC is an alliance of booksellers working together to promote the cultural, literary and economic benefits of shopping at New York City’s over 60 independent bookstores.

Will Kiester is returning to the US after 18-months in Australia at Murdoch Books, to become Publisher of Fairwinds Press, an imprint of Rockport Publications. Previously, He had been at Quarto.

Kaylee Davis’ position at Bookspan’s Children’s BOMC/KBP was eliminated in a reorganization. The company has decided to focus the club in a more educational direction, and it now will be run by the professional clubs. She may be reached at kndavis@optonline.net

Effective in January, Basic Books’ JoAnn Miller is “transitioning” out of her role of VP, Editorial Director to Editor at Large. Miller approached Perseus CEO David Steinberger with this “about a month ago,” Miller told PT.

Granta will open a New York office next year, according to The Bookseller. Run by Matt Weiland, currently Deputy Editor of Granta magazine (who will also take on the role of Associate Publisher in the US), Granta is published in association with Grove/Atlantic and distributed to the trade by PGW in the US. Weiland is moving back to New York in January 2007, where he will combine his deputy editorship of the magazine with overseeing its American launch and its spin-off anthologies. He will work initially out of the Grove/Atlantic offices before looking to open a separate office.

As announced elsewhere, Katie Workman, Associate Publisher of Workman, will be leaving at the end of the year. Perhaps in another sign of the parlous cookbook times, Chris Pavone is leaving Workman’s Artisan imprint after just over a year at the company. Last month, cookbook maven Harriet Bell left HarperCollins.

After a short stint at Ingram Publisher Services, Sally Hertz has left the company and has gone back into consulting. She may be reached at BookPublish2@aol.com. . . . Christine Jones has joined S&S as non-trade Sales Director. . . . John Niedhart joined DK as the B&N National Accounts Sales Manager. He has held editorial positions at O’Reilly Media and Addison Wesley and previously had worked at B&N.

Virgin Books has established a U.S. branch with offices in New York City and Ken Siman has been named Publisher, reporting to K.T. Forster, MD of Virgin Books. Siman was VP, Editor, and Publicity Director of Tarcher/Penguin.

Consortium CEO Don Linn, who bought Consortium in 2002, will continue to play “a key role” in the transition until January 1, when he will leave the company. He may be reached at DLinn@cbsd.com.

Farah Miller, Manager of New Media is leaving Knopf for Modern Bride magazine. . . . Laura Quinn, Assistant Director, Domestic Rights at Crown has left the company.

Among the 25 or so Random House sales employees who lost their jobs in the recent cut are Bruce Dasse (203.453.4294), and Marita Yogore, along with reps in the field and sales management people in the New York office.

Diane Reverand has left St. Martin’s after four years there. She may be reached at Dreverand@earthlink.net. . . and Ben Sevier has left St. Martin’s for Touchstone Fireside, where he is be a senior editor.

In a recent article, PW refers to The Children’s Book Council (CBC)’s new Executive Director, Robin Adelson, who was a former associate general counsel at Primedia Inc. She was hired in September, following the retirement of long time Director, Paula Quint.

Lisa Dolan has been named Executive Director of Special Markets at Abrams (HNA Books). She was previously at Rodale.

Justin Loeber has launched Mouth (www.MouthPublicRelations.com) and has signed several clients, including Simply Green author Danny Seo. . . . Elizabeth Hazelton has left the publicity department of Portfolio and Sentinel to go to Doubleday. . . . HarperCollins Publishers announced Sarah Burningham has been named Associate Director of Publicity for Regan. She reports to Suzanne Wickham, Director of Publicity, and is based in New York. Burningham went to ReganMedia from Miramax Books where she was Associate Director of Publicity.

Following the sale of Trafalgar Square to IPG, Oren Silverstein, the New York rep with Proe & Proe is leaving. He may be reached at OSilver@optonline.net

PROMOTIONS

Last month Peter Olson announced that Richard Sarnoff, President of Random House’s Corporate Development Group and Random House Ventures LLC, had added responsibilities as head of Bertelsmann‘s newly established international venture capital fund, Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments. Now he’s been named President of BDMI and Ed Volini takes over as President of the Corporate Dev. Group. The New Media department will now be the responsibility of Andrew Weber, SVP, Operations and Technology.

Meanwhile, Random House Direct Marketing will become part of the Publishing Group, and VP GM Lisa Faith Phillips will report to David Naggar.

Alison Callahan has been promoted to Executive Editor at HarperCollins, effective December 1st. She has been at HarperCollins for six years
David Levithan has been promoted to Editorial Director of Scholastic Press, reporting to Ellie Berger, SVP, Publisher. Levithan also will continue to be Editorial Director for PUSH.

Weldon Owen, Inc. co-founder John Owen announced the appointment of Terry Newell as CEO and President of Weldon Owen’s US operations. Owen will remain as CEO of the Weldon Owen Group, with particular responsibilities for growth and future acquisitions. The Group was acquired in March 2006 by the Swedish Bonnier Corp.

UPCOMING EVENTS

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) and the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) are hosting a seminar on Managing and Delivering Digital Assets, on November 29, 2006 from 8:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. at AAP, 71 Fifth Avenue, 2nd Floor, New York.

The Small Press Center’s 19th Annual Independent and Small Press Book Fair will be held December 2nd & 3rd, at the Small Press Center. 3,000 to 4,000 attendees are expected, with over 100 independent presses taking part. Go to http://www.smallpress.org, for further information.

The Brooklyn Academy of Music is gearing up for another season of “Eat, Drink and Be Literary.” Presented in partnership with the National Book Foundation, the first writer in the series is Francine Prose on January 11th. Pete Hamill follows on January 25th, and Michael Cunningham is scheduled for February 15th. Tickets include dinner and drinks. For a full listing visit The NBF www.nationalbook.org, or BAM www.bam.org.

DULY NOTED

Word is that the much anticipated Progressive Book Club is gearing to launch in early 2007, with prospective members already signing up. Stayed tuned to http://progressivebookclub.com/

In June 2006, Publishing Trends ran an article on creating a Wikipedia entry. Written by Ann Kirschner (whose book, Sala’s Gift, has just been published: www.salasgift.com), the article was then expanded into a longer piece for The Chronicle of Higher Education. The Chronicle has graciously allowed PT readers to access the article. Go to : http://chronicle.com/free/v53/i13/13b01001.htm

Italians are apparently crazy for him and this year’s Premio Grinzane Cavour Literature Award went to Joe R. Lansdale, “a horror/ mystery/ western/ Texas good ol’ boy writer,” as one observer calls him. Or as Lansdale says on his own website, (www.jrlansdale.com) “The last seven recipients were all Nobel prize award winners, so, y’know, just keep reading and see what happens!” Lansdale’s books are published by Subterranean Press.

Amazon is testing a new mobile phone service, NowNow that allows users to email queries to “live” researchers who will respond within 24 hours. Check out ask@nownow.com.

There certainly was no shortage of politically charged books at the Frankfurt Book Fair this year, and one of the most startling of all was penned by a 23-year-old Russian journalist Yulia Yuzik, who surveys the growing number of female suicide bombers in Chechnya in Allah’s Brides: The Suicide Bombers from Chechnya. Stunned that the number of female suicide bombers in Chechnya had soared to 30 (more than in Palestine, the author reports), Yuzik, now a reporter for the Russian edition of Newsweek, journeyed to the country to carry out her research, speaking with relatives of female suicide bombers who had already carried out their deed, as well as those who had yet to do so. “I am writing about kamikaze women who want to blow up my country. I want everyone to know each of them personally so that we know how and why they blow themselves up,” reports Yuzik, who procured leaked photographs of the bombers before their attacks and afterward in the mortuary. After concluding that many of the bombers are recruited by Chechens working for humanitarian organizations and that, in the majority of cases, the women’s belts are detonated by remote control, the young reporter managed to get her material out of Chechnya just before she was forced out of the country by the secret services. Controversial, to say the least, the book has been banned in Russia, but rights have been sold to Manifestolibri (Italy) and NP-Verlag (Austria). Contact Bettina Nibbe of the Nibbe & Wiedling Literary Agency (Germany).

A newcomer in the world of literary nonfiction is taking Holland by storm. Annejet van der Zijl, the 2003 recipient of the prominent Golden Owl Prize, imparts the true story of Waldemar Nods and Rika van der Lans, who in the fall of 1928 begin a tumultuous relationship that spans some of the most fascinating and most tragic episodes of Western history in Sonny Boy. Waldemar is just shy of 20 years old, while Rika is nearly 40. He’s a student from Surinam and she is a Dutch married mother of four. He is black and she is white. They live in different worlds in many respects, so when Rika finds out that she is carrying his baby, the scandal is so enormous that she is forced to leave her children, while Waldemar can never return to his beloved Surinam. The two manage to build a prosperous life together with their son Waldy, whom they call “Sonny Boy,” but all that changes when the couple is betrayed in 1944 for harboring Jews at the start of WWII. For 14-year-old Waldy, this is only the beginning of a lifelong struggle with the loss of his parents.

Also in Holland, readers are finding that there’s nothing quite like a delicately aged Cheese, Willem Elsschot’s 1933 classic comedy about Frans Laarmans, a humble shipping clerk who is suddenly promoted to the position of agent of a Dutch cheese company. Thrilled at his elevation in status, he sets up an office at home and takes on the delivery of 10,000 full-cream Edams, only to find that he can’t stand the stuff. Though not for the lactose intolerant, this “delicious satire about business, greed, ambition and cheese” has seen a recent resurgence in popularity, particularly in Germany where it sold more than 20,000 copies in one month after it was mentioned by the inimitable Elke Heidenreich. Rights have been sold to Losada (Spain), Husets (Denmark), Le Castor Astral (France), Wedge (Japan), and elsewhere. English film rights are under option. Though Cheese has already been published by Granta, English rights are still available for two of Elsschot’s other books, Soft Soap/The Leg, in which a young Laarmans rips people off by selling them a very expensive fake magazine, and Will o’ the Wisp, wherein Laarmans returns as a guide for three Afghan sailors in Antwerp as he tries to help them catch a girl. Floortje Jansen at Querido holds the rights to Sonny Boy and to Elsschot’s delectable treats.

“Those who believe in the innate wickedness of humanity are in for a hell of a time with The Jewish Messiah,” the latest offering by Dutch author Arnon Grunberg, who also writes as Marek van der Jagt. Xavier Radek, the grandson of a Nazi living in Basel, befriends a rabbi’s son, Awromele, who advises him to study Yiddish and have himself circumcised. Following a botched procedure, Xavier, convinced of his messianic legerdemain, picks up a paintbrush in the hopes of comforting Jews through his art. While his parents dismiss his behavior as adolescent inanity, he moves with Awremole to the “Venice of the North” where he presents himself at the prestigious Rietveld Academy, while Awremole takes a job stocking shelves at the Albert Heijn supermarket. Now a New York resident, Grunberg was awarded the AKO Prize, the Dutch equivalent of the Booker, for his earlier book Phantom Pain, the tale of a reputable literary novelist diminished by obscurity and debilitating debt. He’s been published in about 20 countries, including Italy (Blue Edizioni), Hungary (Ulpius-Ház), Germany (Diogenes), France (Actes Sud) and Spain (Tusquets), and he was most recently published in the US by Other Press. Contact Anna Stein at Donadio & Olson.

From falling stars to black holes, and from the secrets of the Arctic to the mysteries surrounding the origins of the universe, Alexander von Humboldt boldly went where no man had gone before in his study of the complexities of the natural world in The Cosmos. These phenomena might, in fact, pale in comparison with the fact that a hefty new edition of his classic, which gathers all five volumes into one with an eye-popping 99-euro price tag, has stormed to the 15th spot on the bestseller list in Der Spiegel (unofficially the first time a title at this price level climbed this high on the bestseller list). Emerging from the popular lectures he gave in Berlin, The Cosmos was first published in five volumes from 1845 to 1862, to the tune of 80,000 copies. The new edition, published by Eichborn, is delivered in a slipcase along with the Berghaus-Atlas, and includes corrections and additions made by von Humboldt, as well as a rich collection of maps. Negotiations are underway with a distinguished Spanish house and several other publishers are currently considering the book. Contact Jutta Willand at Eichborn.

Finally, winter may be just around the corner, but 10 lucky editors will soon be slathering on the sunscreen as they tour the literary scene in glorious Buenos Aires. Organized by Fundación TyPA with the help of Museo de Arte Latino-americano de Buenos Aires (Malba), the British Council, the Goethe Institut, Fundación Antorchas and the embassies of Canada, France, Israel, and the US, the grants cover room and board, and travel to the week-long tour (May 22-28, 2005). Candidates should work in translated fiction and be able to read and understand Spanish. The deadline for applications is Nov. 19. Contact Gabriela Adamo at gadamo@typa.org.ar or visit www.typa.org.ar.

Sara Nelson, Glamour’s Senior Contributing Editor, Books, and columnist for The New York Observer, is moving to the NY Post as the books columnist, starting May 18. She continues her Monday morning stint on Air America, the new liberal radio network.

Steve Parr, CEO and President of Harry Abrams, is leaving to become President of Primedia’s Performance Automotive Group. His new employer knew of him from his previous stint as President of EMAP USA, which was acquired by Primedia.

Mel Parker has announced the formation of Mel Parker Books, LLC, “an innovative book packaging firm.” He was most recently in SVP Editorial Director at Bookspan, and before that at Warner Books. Parker may be reached at mel@melparkerbooks.com, or by cell, (917) 696-6105.

Walter L. Weintz has started his new job as Chief Operating Officer at Workman Publishing. He was VP Deputy Publisher at S&S. In other S&S news Claire Israel moved to S&S as Director of Electronic Publishing, reporting to Kate Tentler. She was most recently at Nuvomedia/Gemstar. Rosemary Ahern, who left Washington Square Press in 2002, has joined Other Press, to run its fiction imprint, Handsel Books.

Karen Kreiger has become COO of Amber-Allen Publishing in Marin County. She was previously VP Custom Publishing at Creative Publishing in Minneapolis.

Chris Murphy has left Scholastic to go to Little Brown as VP, Director, Juvenile Sales. And coincidentally, Mary Gruetzke has moved from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers to Cartwheel Books at Scholastic, as a Senior Editor. Erin McHugh, Creative Director for Scholastic trade, has left the company and may be reached at emchughnyc@aol.com.

Katy Barrett, who was VP Publicity at Vintage and is currently Executive Publicist at Large for Knopf is leaving after 15 years, but will maintain a consulting relationship with the company. She may be reached through RH or at katybarrett@optonline.net. … Leslie Sepuka is coming to Vintage and Anchor as Publicity Manager. She was at WGBH-TV. Meanwhile Vintage has hired a new Associate Editor, Lexy Bloom, who was most recently at Viking and Granta. … In other Random Inc. news, Tim Jarrell has been named VP Publisher of Fodor’s. He was previously at Sports Illustrated for Kids and Sesame Street. … Doug Pepper has resigned as Editor in Chief of Crown, to return to Canada as President and Publishers of McClelland & Stewart. … And, as reported earlier, Amy Hertz is going to her own imprint at Doubleday from Riverhead West Coast.

Viz, the West Coast publisher of Japanese anime and manga, has just hired a new VP of Sales, Joe Morici. He was previously the SVP Sales of Metro3D, a video game developer and publisher. Viz recently announced it would move distribution to S&S from PGW.

Ingram Book Group has hired Phil Ollila as VP, Publisher Services. Ollila was previously at Borders. … John Phillips has left Baker & Taylor, where its Distribution Solutions Group is on hold. Phillips had come to B&T from PubEasy/Vista.

Nancy Grubb, Publisher and Group Manager, Art Books at Princeton University Press will be leaving in June. She may be reached at ngrubb@nyc.rr.com.

Greg Brandenburgh has left ThorsonsElement U.S. and may be reached at Ggeorgesam@aol.com. Steve Fischer has been promoted to VP in the US office, reporting to Belinda Budge in the UK, and continues to oversee sales. Chris Ahern, who worked with Fischer at Tuttle, becomes Director of Marketing and Publicity, a new position.

As previously reported, Perseus’ reorganization includes the departures of Holly Hodder, VP Publisher of Westview, and Counterpoint’s Dawn Sefarian … In an unrelated announcement, Amanda Cook has moved from Basic Books to Houghton Mifflin as a Senior Editor in the Boston office of the adult trade department.

Following the resignation of Neil Ortenberg, Avalon announced the acquisition of FourWalls Eight Windows and the ascension of its Publisher John Oakes as VP of the Avalon Group and Publisher of Thunder’s Mouth, and Nation Books. … With the sale of 4 Walls 8 Windows to Avalon, longtime Senior Editor Kathryn Belden is leaving the company. She may be reached at kabeldn@aol.com.

Sheila Oakes, Executive Editor at Perigee/Putnam, is leaving to join St. Martin’s with the same title, while Sally Kim of Thomas Dunne and Julia Pastore of St. Martin’s Press have moved to Shaye Areheart’s imprint at Harmony/Crown. Airie Stuart has been named Editorial Director and head of trade in the scholarly and reference division at Palgrave Macmillan. She will be based in St. Martin’s offices. She was previously at Wiley.

Distributor CDS has added a few employees to its new CDS Books publishing line. Meg Parsont has been named Director of Marketing and Publicity, while Donna Ellis has been appointed Managing Editor. Parsont had been Publicity Director at Mitchell Beazley. Ellis was most recently Senior Production Editor at Hyperion.

DK US announced that Chuck Lang, SVP Publishing, has left the company.

May Events
May is gala month in publishing, with two of the industry’s biggest charity events: On May 3, Literacy Partners hosts its annual Gala at Lincoln Center. As usual, it features Liz Smith as MC, joined by Hillary Clinton, Simon Winchester, and Tom Wolfe, and honoring Tim Russert and Tom Brokaw. On May 11, the UJA honors Jack Romanos. Al Roker is the host (NBC has obviously cornered the May gala sweeps), and Frank McCourt will present the award.

• The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) is celebrating it’s 37th birthday with a “Big Party for Small Publishers” on May 10 at the Mercantile Library. For information, to RSVP, or to make a tax-deductible contribution, contact tdidato@clmp.org.

• The 16th Annual Triangle Awards, honoring the best lesbian and gay fiction,
non-fiction, and poetry published in 2003, will be presented on May 12 at
the Tishman Auditorium of the New School for Social Research (66 West 12th
Street) at 7 p.m. Sponsored by HX Magazine & HarperCollins, it is free and open to the public, with a reception following.

• Christopher Lehmann-Haupt of The New York Times talks with Arthur Gelb, former Managing Editor of The New York Times and author of City Room (Marian Wood/Putnam). The interview will be at 6 p.m. on May 20 at the Small Press Center, 20 West 44th.

Duly Noted

Atria’s Judith Curr, Morrow’s Lisa Gallagher and St Martin’s John Cunningham made for a tremendous marketing force at PAMA’s monthly luncheon where they laid out 3 cardinal rules for big book (or any book) marketing:
1. The book’s “gotta deliver” and word of mouth reigns supreme. (Curr’s dictum: “If it’s difficult to get the packaging right then the book’s message is obviously not clear.”)
2. Timing is everything — and “when the momentum is going, drop everything and get out of the way.” (Cunningham)
3. Do nothing in a vacuum — particularly spend money on ads. Successful marketing depends on the successful interaction of all component parts of the plan. (Gallagher)
P.S. Use the Web every chance you get …

Mazel Tov

Congratulations to Otto Penzler and Lisa Atkinson on their nuptials. The wedding party includes groomsmen of high media merit — Larry Kirshbaum, Sir Howard Stringer, Anthony Cheetham, and Nat Sobel, with Thomas Cook as the best man and Michael Malone as an usher.

Then there’s (gasp!) The Public. Coming off last year’s “How to get Published” event, there will now be three “Master Classes” aimed at the writing masses. Held in conjunction with English PEN, the courses cover children’s fiction; memoir and biography; and film and TV writing. Each session lasts two hours and is chaired by a leading broadcaster (consumers can attend all three for £85). The scribbling commoners still won’t be admitted to the main hall at Olympic, but the idea seems to be that they’ll feel as if they’re touching the hem of the veil. And there’s Granta’s Young Writers Sessions and the Hay Festival seminars — and sponsorship by the Guardian and Daily Mail, media buy-in to be considered by BEA organizers, perchance.

The 3rd EpubLondon remains a two-day affair but is a long way from the glitzy consumer focus of Rocket eBooks and Questia.com. We’re talking e-learning, B2B, content management, and metadata. Unfortunately, the “Great Autumn Flood” panel, which PT previewed last month, has been canceled (after being renamed “Running To Stand Still”; apparently the metaphors got too depressing). We’ll leave you with this note of consolation: The LBF dates dovetail grandly with Paris’s Salon du Livre, so there’s just enough time to pack up your stand and your bags, recover from the week’s excesses, toddle across the Channel, and do it all over again.

Read any good Catalan, Welsh, or Polish authors lately? If a group of publishers from across these supposed hinterlands has their way, you will. Based at the Mercator Center of the University of Aberystwyth in Wales, a four-year-old effort called Literature Across Frontiers (LAF) has strung together a network of off-the-beaten-path publishers from more then a dozen countries who are determined to see their languages and literatures gain a broader audience. With official backing in hand from the European Union’s Culture 2000 initiative, LAF is mobilizing its network of publishers, translators, agents, and fund directors to rescue neglected “minority” languages — including Latvian, Portuguese, Welsh, and Hungarian — by putting translation funding and policy issues on center stage at book fair forums from Prague to Paris, and Leipzig to Gothenburg. As LAF project manager Alexandra Büchler has noted, 40 million people in the EU speak territorial languages other than the official language of their state. That’s virtually a whole new continent of literature, wide open for discovery.

Of course, lit-in-translation has always been a quixotic affair. Whether mainstream European publishers — or their counterparts overseas — will take as much as a peek in LAF’s direction remains to be seen. But funding has come in from sources such as the Central European Book Publishing Fund in Amsterdam, the Soros Open Society Institute, and Austrian Kulture Kontact, which aids publishers from Balkan states, in addition to translation funds in most other European countries. (Translation grants are also available to American literary publishers, typically university presses, with their troves of foreign authors.) This cash has gotten a first round of translations under way from authors including Poland’s Olga Tokarczuk (published by Granta in the US); Christopher Meredith from Wales; Nora Ikstena, Vladis Rumnieks, and Andrejs Migla from Latvia; Patraig Standun, Michael O’Conghaile, and Padraic Breathnach from Ireland; and Slovenia’s Andrej Blatnik.

In addition, Literature Across Frontiers has helped launch the Mosaic Publishers’ Network, which grew out of an inaugural conference in Aberystwyth in 1998. With members including the Czech Republic’s One Woman Press, France’s Actes Sud, and Kedros in Greece, Mosaic has become a sort of grassroots federation fighting to put little-studied translation issues on the map. A second conference, held at last year’s Prague Book Fair, helped turn up the wattage with participants including Andre Schiffrin; the well-known Slavic translator Michael Henry Heim from UCLA; and Jeffrey Young of the literary magazine Trafika. At that event, participants pondered the role played by translators in today’s book business, worrying over the scant protection of translators’ copyright, negligible authors’ fees, and publishers’ reluctance to offer the translator a share of the commercial success of a translated work.

As for the future, Mosaic and LAF will be back at Bookworld Prague this month with a three-day slate of readings, debates, and film screenings, and other projects on tap include a study of support for minority literatures, an online database of the translation infrastructure in Europe, and an online “European Review of Books and Writing,” described as a multilingual source of publishing news. Hellenophiles among us will want to pencil in a week-long residency with Greek poets, translators, and musicians in Corfu and Athens. And finally, stay tuned for LAF’s third international conference, to be held in Helsinki in 2003.

Correspondent Hrvoje Bozicevic, publisher of Editions Bozicevic in Zagreb, contributed to this article.