The New York Times

Phoebe Yeh to Join Random House Children's Books as Publisher for Crown Books for Young Readers
June 6, 2013

New York, NY (June 6, 2013)—Veteran children’s book editor Phoebe Yeh will join Random House Children’s Books as Vice President, Publisher, Crown Books for Young Readers, effective June 21, it was announced today by Barbara Marcus, the company’s President and Publisher. Yeh will leave her current post at HarperCollins Children’s Books, where she has worked…

Publisher Threatens to Sue Blogger for $1-Billion
May 16, 2013

Jeffrey Beall is a metadata librarian at the University of Colorado at Denver, but he's known online for his popular blog Scholarly Open Access, where he maintains a running list of open-access journals and publishers he deems questionable or predatory.

Now, one of those publishers intends to sue Mr. Beall, and says it is seeking $1-billion in damages.

The publisher, the OMICS Publishing Group, based in India, is also warning that Mr. Beall could be imprisoned for up to three years under India's Information Technology Act, according to a letter from the group's lawyer.

Rekulak and Cohen Promoted at Quirk Books
May 10, 2013

Quirk Books associate publisher and creative director Jason Rekulak has been promoted to publisher, and vice president Brett Cohen has been promoted to president, effective immediately. Both Rekulak and Cohen have been key members since joining Quirk. During his 13-year tenure, Rekulak has acquired and/or conceived some of the company’s most successful books, including the international sensation Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the #1 New York Times best seller Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, and the Edgar® Award winning Last Policeman. Most recently, he launched Quirk into the middle-grade fiction genre with the Tales from Lovecraft Middle School series and Nick & Tesla’s High-Voltage Danger Lab, an upcoming BEA Middle Grade Editors’ Buzz selection. As publisher, Rekulak will continue to be primarily responsible for Quirk’s varied list, overseeing acquisitions, editorial, and design.

How Popular Are Amazon’s Kindle Singles?
May 3, 2013

The New York Times ran a fascinating profile of David Blum, the editor of Amazon’s “Kindle Singles” store. But along the way, they also took a look at the whole phenomenon of Singles—and what it means for the future of books. Amazon has sold nearly 5 million Kindle singles over the last 27 months, according to the article about Blum, who tells the newspaper that “Every day I become more obsessed with how brilliant the concept is…” But it’s got me wondering just how popular the Kindle Singles really are…

Bowker and Smith Publicity Make it Easy for Small Presses and Self Publishers to Tap Public Relations Help
May 2, 2013

ProQuest affiliate Bowker® is expanding resources available to authors and small publishers on its MyIdentifiers.com website by teaming with Smith Publicity, widely recognized as one of the industry’s top book publicity agencies. Now, MyIdentifiers.com will include a link to Smith’s website where authors and publishers can take the first steps in exploring public relations programs that can effectively support their publishing efforts. The cooperation with Smith is part of Bowker’s larger program to help MyIdentifiers users succeed by connecting them to trusted providers of a range of essential services.

Deanna Brown Joins Byliner as President
May 2, 2013

May 2, 2013—San Francisco—Byliner, the digital publisher and subscription reading service, today announced that Deanna Brown, former CEO of Federated Media, has joined Byliner as President. Brown brings her deep experience in digital media and publishing to the startup, which is the leading publisher in the fastest-growing segment of digital publishing.

Brown is an accomplished media executive with more than 20 years of experience, ranging from entrepreneur to Fortune 500 executive. As CEO of Federated Media, she doubled the company’s revenues and was responsible for building a network that reached 180 million unique visitors a month—outranking Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft. Prior to Federated, Brown was President of Scripps Networks Interactive, and held Vice President and General Manager titles at Yahoo and AOL. She was CEO and cofounder of Powerful Media/Inside.com, which was acquired by Primedia, and CEO and founder of Gaming Industry News, which was acquired by Ziff Davis. In 1995, Brown cofounded CondéNet, the digital division of publisher Condé Nast.

James Patterson speaks out about his aggressive “book industry bailout” ads
April 25, 2013

James Patterson is in no need of a bailout. The author of bestsellers including “Along Came a Spider” and “Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas” currently occupies spots on four different New York Times bestseller lists with three discrete books. (Those would be “Alex Cross, Run”; “Now You See Her,” written with Michael Ledwidge; and “I, Michael Bennett,” written with Ledwidge also.)

Despite his success in a strain of genre fiction not often recommended in classrooms, Patterson has become, suddenly, the closest thing the publishing industry has to an ambassador. The multimillion-seller author placed an ad last weekend in the New York

Keeping Score with VIDA: Women in Literary Arts
April 25, 2013

VIDA, an organization for women in the literary arts, conducts “The Count,” an annual survey of publications that contain book reviews, and compares the number of male vs. female reviewers, as well as the number of books by men vs. books by women that were reviewed. The results are surprising.

The Young Salinger, Mordant Yet Hopeful
April 24, 2013

On Nov. 18, 1941, a struggling Manhattan author wrote to a young woman in Toronto to tell her to look for a new piece of his in a coming issue of The New Yorker. This short story, he said, about “a prep school kid on his Christmas vacation,” had inspired his editor to ask for an entire series on the character, but the author himself was having misgivings. “I’ll try a couple more, anyway,” he wrote, “and if I begin to miss my mark I’ll quit.”

He ended the letter by asking for her reaction to “the first Holden story,”