Bantam Dell

Literary agents and editors have a long tradition of meeting over lunch to talk about work.  I always found it to be a lovely perk of the industry to conduct business while dining at one or another of New York¹s fine dining establishments (on the company tab, of course). In this “Lit Lunch” segment of Pub Buzz, I'll take the occasional peek at who's lunching with whom and what they're chatting about.

Open Road Integrated Media, a digital publisher and multimedia content company, announced today that it is continuing to add experienced and highly respected publishing executives and editors to its team. Nita Taublib, former executive Vice President, Publisher, and Editor in Chief of Bantam Dell, will serve as Strategic Advisor for Romance, spearheading Open Road's acquisition and publishing of backlist romance titles for its Author Brand Program.

Debbie Macomber will join the Random House Publishing Group in 2012, to be published by its Ballantine Bantam Dell division's Ballantine imprint.

In an internal memo issued Tuesday, Gina Centrello, president and publisher of the Random House Publishing Group, announced the promotion of Susan Kamil—current senior vice president and editor-in-chief—to the additional position of publisher of the Random House and Dial Press imprints, reporting to Centrello. Centrello had served as publisher of these two imprints while the post remained vacant.

From multimillion-dollar acquisitions to multimillion-dollar best-sellers, powerful women stand at every pivotal, decision-making point in the book publishing process. Book Business’ first annual “50 Top Women in Book Publishing” feature recognizes and honors some of these industry leaders who affect and transform how publishing companies do business, and what—and how—consumers read.

On Tuesday, novelist Danielle Steel released 71 of her works, including the new "One Day at a Time," as digital downloads on Amazon.com and The eBook Store by Sony, representing the largest online release by an author in a single day. This is the first time Steel's books, which are published by Random House division Bantam Dell, have been made available in digital format.

In preparation for the release of "Faefever," the third installment of Karen Marie Moning's “Fever” paranormal thriller series, Bantam Dell decided to utilized a varied set of promotional tools. Regular installments of a free podcast containing the full audio of "Darkfever," the original book in the series; a mass-market paperback release of "Bloodfever," the second entry in the series; and online excerpts of the first few chapters from the new title all helped push “Faefever” onto The New York Times Best-seller List.

This week's book industry headlines were peppered with words such as "layoffs," "reorganization" and "cuts" as publishers responded en masse to the effects of the slumping economy. Among the announcements made this week:

Depending on which study results you stumble upon, somewhere between 60 percent and almost 90 percent of Americans don’t like their jobs. And somewhere between 1 million and 1.4 million people call in sick every day. Sure, a percentage of those people probably have the flu, migraines or other ailments, but many of them likely have a serious case of Ihatemyjobitis. Book Business’ first annual study on the “20 Best Book Publishing Companies to Work For” explores which companies in the industry rank highest among their employees for overall job satisfaction. Each company that was nominated by its employees was rated based on

Environmental advocacy groups were likely breaking out the champagne as Random House Inc. (www.RandomHouse.com)—the world’s largest English-language trade book publisher and the U.S. division of Random House, the largest trade book publisher in the world—­announced its plans for a tenfold increase in its use of recycled paper. The company says that within four years a minimum of 30 percent of the uncoated paper it uses to print the majority of its U.S. titles will be derived from recycled fibers (as opposed to its current 3 percent). The announcement marks the most substantial environmental initiative in the company’s history, and considering the fact that