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…Continue Reading
PEOPLE Rich Freese has been named President of Publishers Group West, reporting to Kevan Lyon, EVP for Distribution and Publishing Services at AMS. Freese, who will relocate to the San Francisco area, succeeds Charlie Winton, founder and former President and CEO of PGW, and now Group Chairman and CEO of Avalon Publishing. Another publisher on…Continue Reading
A day spent trolling the aisles at this year’s Stationery Show suggests that a name change may be in order: there ain’t much paper in sight, and what little there is seems a mere afterthought to the now-familiar deluge of men’s silk ties, personalized golf and baseballs (two different manufacturers), lamp shades, chess boards, beaded…Continue Reading
PEOPLE Between the Random/Ballantine merger and the “Voluntary Retirement” package, insiders say that the total number of exiting employees is cresting thirty, including Howard Weill (Hweill@optonline.net), Mike Moran (mmoran123@aol.com), Ivan Held (IvanHeld@yahoo.com), Dan Rembert (Drem3ert@earthlink.net), Kathleen Spinelli (kspinelli@ mac.com), Susan Gilmer (susan@gilmer.com), Barbara Greenberg, Erica Muncy, and editors Tracy Brown (Tracy_Brown03@msn.com) and Dan Smetanka. The…Continue Reading
Call them what you will — “print-on-demand subsidy publishers” or “glorified vanity houses” — the three leading POD publishers are subtly rethinking their roles in the realm of pay-to-play publishing. Collectively, iUniverse, Xlibris, and 1stBooks Library are banging out some 20,000 titles per year — with that market growing 40% or more annually — and…Continue Reading
PEOPLE Random House has offered a “Voluntary Retirement Window of Opportunity” to “most” employees who have been with the company at least five years, and are 50 years old or older. The email offer was made on March 19 and employees must notify HR by mid-May. Many people clicked the Delete button before reading the…Continue Reading
70,000-Odd Small Publishers Might Be Wagging Your Dog They’re out there — all 73,000 of them — scrabbling for your shelf-space, mucking up your mindshare. That’s the number of book publishers in the US, according to Bowker’s Books in Print database, and it has nearly doubled in the past decade. Blame the go-go ’90s, the…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
Stroll through Shanghai’s “Book City,” a four-story goliath crammed with titles on a surprising breadth of subjects, and you’ll notice something big is happening in the land of Mao’s little red book. As the Chinese government makes unprecedented moves to loosen its grip on book retailing and distribution — working to satisfy obligations under China’s…Continue Reading
PEOPLE Lots happening in the sales and distribution world: The big — though not unexpected — news is that, following Kristina Peterson’s departure from Simon & Schuster, Rick Richter has been named President of the S&S Children’s Publishing Division, a position he held prior to Peterson’s arrival. He is currently President of the S&S Sales…Continue Reading
