News and opinion on the changing world of book publishing
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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April 2007
PEOPLE March brought some big announcements from industry veterans: Teri Kelly, President of the trade and reference division at Houghton Mifflin has announced that she will leave the company where she has worked for twenty five years, once a replacement is found. And after seventeen years with the Walker Group (most recently as COO of [...]
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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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February 2006
PEOPLE Another busy month of musical chairs, Geoff Kloske has been named VP Publisher of Riverhead, replacing Julie Grau and Cindy Spiegel, who moved to Doubleday in November. Kloske was VP, Executive Editor of the Adult Trade Group at S&S. Linda Kennedy has resigned as President of Globe Pequot Press “to pursue other interests,” according [...]
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December 2003
The 93rd annual convention of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) was held at the newly minted Moscone Center West in San Francisco on November 20-25, and despite initial jitters, all systems were go. “We’re hoping to reach 6,000 attendees with 5,000 pre-registered,” said Charleen Silva Delfino, Convention Co-chair. “We were worried earlier [...]
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November 2003
John Wiley & Sons publishes the #1 seller in travel guides (Frommer’s), one of the leading franchises in consumer technology (Dummies), and what it calls the bestselling cookbook brand in the world (yep, Betty Crocker). Bolstered by the acquisition of Hungry Minds two years ago — which dropped all three of those blockbuster brands into [...]
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July 2003
Random Redux, Freese Helms PGW: Client Distribution Biz Jostles and Grows Don Fehr, nearly a year into his tenure as Director of Smithsonian Books, needed a distribution fix. The august publishing concern (formerly Smithsonian Institution Press) was gunning for trade sales growth — aiming to reverse its mix of 80% academic and 20% trade-bound titles [...]
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December 2002
PEOPLE Simon & Schuster’s various imprints have been trimmed over the past few weeks: Rachel Klayman has been laid off from The Free Press, Jeff Neuman has left S&S (and may be reached at neudors@yahoo.com), and Rosemary Ahern (who arrived from Dutton less than two years ago), and Kim Kanner and an assistant have departed [...]
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November 2001
PEOPLE Layoffs are the order of the day, though mergers, not the economy, seem to be the main reason. DK has laid off about 25 people, with more to come. Meanwhile, the move down to Hudson Street has been postponed, apparently as a cost-savings measure. No word yet on Phyllis Grann’s plans, though Random House [...]
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November 2000
Beat the Devil Coelho Back in Brazil, Mortier in the Netherlands, And Pleijel Shakes Up Sweden Brazilian high priest of letters Paulo Coelho has conjured up The Devil and Miss Prym after two years of soul searching, and the result is a half-million-copy catechism that’s been deemed a “parable in which the characters show all [...]
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