New York editors and publishers tend to speak of Amy Einhorn’s success as the product of an almost mystical editorial instinct. Colleagues cite Ms. Einhorn’s “good taste;” her nose, her eye, and her gut; her unique ability to pinpoint the kinds of books that thousands of people want to read. Most Read More
The Americas division of Cambridge University Press has a new managing director: Michael Peluse comes to New York from managing Cambridge University Press's Iberia office. He replaces the most recent president of the Americas division, Dr. Richard Ziemacki, who worked at the Press for 37 years. Read More
Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn and a newly published essay collection, The Ecstasy of Influence, granted an interview with Bloomberg News. Asked to comment on his native borough from his new home in sunny California, Mr. Lethem gave the following response:
It's been made blander, a little more accessible and it's taken over the world. Read More
Barnes & Noble has owned a book publisher, Sterling Publishing, since 2003. Now the Wall Street Journal is reporting that B&N wants to sell Sterling, an interesting move as B&N competitor Amazon ramps up its own publishing business. Read More
Will Bois Sauvage, the fictional Mississippi town created by the novelist Jesmyn Ward, one day reach the status of William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County? Time will tell, but Ms. Ward has signed a deal with Bloomsbury for a third novel set in the Gulf Coast hamlet of her invention. Her most recent book, Salvage the Bones, won the 2011 National Book Award for fiction.
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David Kelly, an editor at The New York Times book review, has been promoted to the position of deputy editor. Bob Harris, a 29-year veteran of The New York Times and the most recent deputy editor of the book review, left the newspaper in mid-December. Read More
Jill Schwartzman has been named executive editor at Dutton, an imprint of Penguin, reports Publishers Marketplace. Ms. Schwartzman's most recent job was senior editor at Hyperion, where she acquired such titles as White Girl Problems, by David Oliver Cohen, Tanner Cohen, & Lara Schoenhals, and Whiter Shades of Pale: The Stuff White People Like Read More
James Franco is publishing a novel! And not only that, he has abandoned traditional publishing houses to publish with Amazon. The book is called Actors Anonymous and was acquired by Amazon's fiction editor Ed Park from Mr. Franco's agent, Richard Abate.
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Ed Park was hired to acquire fiction titles for Amazon's new New York publishing house in September, but it was not clear if his new job meant his days as an editor at The Believer, the magazine he helped found, were over. Well, it turns out they are.
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Counter to prevailing trends, the online culture magazine The Rumpus is starting a print subscription program. But, like other recently announced subscription plans, The Rumpus won't be sending you a magazine: instead, for $5 a month, subscribers will receive a letter in the mail each week from a writer. Read More
A new year, a new crop of books. The Millions book blog has posted its massive preview of books coming out in 2012. There are essay collections from William Gibson and Jonathan Franzen, selected poetry from W.G. Sebald and new novels from Toni Morrison, Michael Chabon and Richard Ford, among very many others.
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January stretches out before us like a desolate wilderness raging with inclement weather. What better way to fill the hours than filming your own adaptation of Ulysses and uploading it to the Internet? Other writers who died 70 years ago with works now in the public domain include Virginia Woolf, Sherwood Anderson and Henri Bergson. Read More
Critics earn paychecks (small ones) because readers value (sort of) their expert opinions. But sometimes critics do self-important things. Sam Anderson, critic at large of The New York Times Magazine, just published his selected marginalia of 2011. Read More
On the CBS show The Good Wife there is a character named Andrew Wylie. Played by the actor Tim Guinee, the character is a private investigator hired by the state attorney's office to cause some drama by casually revealing past love affairs to all the wrong people and reviving dormant scandals. An inciter of barely suppressed gasps and sobs. But could it really be just a coincidence that he shares a name with a certain literary agent?
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Amazon has released its annual list of its bestselling products this year. No big surprises: the bestselling e-book was Kathryn Stockett's The Help; the most popular print book was Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson; the latest Harry Potter movie was the bestselling DVD and Adele had the bestselling album with 21. Read More
