Ellie Berger

The second installment of Veronica Roth's dystopian trilogy, The Divergent Series: Insurgent, grabbed $52.3 million in its opening weekend at the U.S. box office, just shy of Divergent's $54.6 million debut last year. Clocking $47 million worldwide, Insurgent brings the teen action franchise's total earnings to a plump $388 million so far, with two movies still to come.

Roth, who earned an estimated $17 million last year selling some 7 million books, is but one of many ink spillers whose literary successes have translated into box office hits. Nearly a quarter of the 200 top-grossing films worldwide tallied by Box Office Mojo have been directly adapted from books

Scholastic, the global children's publishing, education and media company, today announces a live webcast with worldwide bestselling author J.K. Rowling on October 11, 2012, and the launch of the Harry Potter Reading Club, an online destination created to share the magical world of Harry Potter with a generation of new readers. The live webcast is presented by the new Harry Potter Reading Club from Scholastic at www.scholastic.com/hpreadingclub.

So just how hungry are fans for The Hunger Games? Ravenous, it seems. Suzanne Collins' popular YA book trilogy, which spawned the juggernaut $680 million–grossing Jennifer Lawrence blockbuster, has now passed a major publishing milestone, putting in track to become one of the top—if not the top—best sellers of 2012. So just how many books has it sold? According to its publisher, Scholastic, the trilogy has now sold over 50 million copies in both print and digital formats. To put that in perspective, the books have more than doubled in sales since the beginning of 2012 when there were

Global children's publisher Scholastic has teamed up with independent digital publisher Ruckus Media Group to form a new imprint, Scholastic Ruckus.

Lori Benton, chairman of the board of directors for the nonprofit Every Child a Reader, has been named vice president and publisher of Scholastic's trade publishing division, overseeing direction of the publishing program for all imprints of the division. She will report to Scholastic Trade Publishing President Ellie Berger.

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.