March 24, 2008
Lunch for Monday, March 24

2008 Book Sense Book of the Year Awards
Fiction
A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini
 
Nonfiction
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, by Barbara Kingsolver, with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver
 
Children's Literature
The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick
 
Children's Illustrated
Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity, by Mo Willems
 
Click through to see the honor books

Macaulay Forms Imprint for Roaring Brook
Bestselling author and illustrator (and Caldecott and Macarthur winner) David Macaulay is creating an imprint called David Macaulay Studio at Roaring Brook Press. The imprint will start with two new books by Macaulay in 2011 but will also publish "derivative books published under his editorial direction, and for books by other authors and artists brought to the imprint by him in his capacity as creative director."
 
The two books from Macaulay are HOME SWEET HOME, an exploration of the way our planet's climate and ecosystems work, and a new work on American history.
 
Roaring Brook Publisher Simon Boughton declares, "David Macaulay is a national treasure. He's made a unique contribution to young people's literature, and led readers of all ages to see the world around them in new ways. It's a great thrill and a great privilege to have the opportunity to work with him, and establishing an imprint under his creative direction makes perfect creative and business sense.
 
Ken Wright at Writers House represented Macaulay in the deal.

Cancelled "Reservations"
Three Rivers Press has cancelled GREAT RESERVATIONS, a book by two former concierges at the Four Seasons Hotel in Chicago. Publicity director Katie Wainwright tells the AP, "despite previous and repeated inquiries made by Three Rivers Press, we recently learned that Abigail Hart and Nancy Callahan did not disclose that they had signed confidentiality agreements with their former employer." The book was scheduled for release in June and a few anecdotes had already been cited in gossip columns.
AP

On Editor Asher, 78
Longtime book editor Aaron Asher, 78, died from complications of cancer on Tuesday. He had an eponymous imprint at HarperCollins after a career that included serving as vp of Holt, Rinehart & Winston; editor in chief of Macmillan's general books division; editor in chief of Farrar, Straus & Giroux; and publisher of Grove Press.
 
In 1969, the NYT said Asher was "noted for his distinguished list of authors, tweedy attire and accomplished renditions of Bach preludes and fugues on the piano." They add now in their obituary,"he was routinely brought in by publishers to revive their flagging trade-book divisions."
 
Over the years his authors included Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Arthur Miller, Milan Kundera, Erich Fromm, Frank Conroy, and President Lyndon B. Johnson.
NYT obit

The Most News that the Business Uses
Every day, we gather, report, recap and interpret the most publishing news, deal transactions, and job offers anywhere. Today's Lunch Deluxe includes these additional stories and links:
 
Why the Urgency at Borders?
BN on eBooks and Last Year's Quamut
What Kind of Print Should Authors Demand from their Agents?
Will Bret Easton Ellis Ever See His Turnaround?
NPR On Online Free Books
The End for LitBlog Co-Op
 
while PublishersMarketplace.com adds about 140 deals that just went out  in our full round-up, capsule coverage of over 100 reviews from all the top newspapers yesterday, and dozens of news stories and write-ups from last week.
 
PublishersMarketplace.com always features all of the unique data and tools that drive business every day: Unlimited access to deals, our new Top Dealmakers (with 180 lists of busy agents, agencies, editors and imprints) live contacts, our representation database, comprehensive coverage of reviews and bestseller lists from all over, special tools ranging from the Book Tracker to Amazoom, our custom publishing search
index, and the new top reviewers tables.
 
Plus our popular member pages and blogs bring hundreds of thousands of focused page views from the publishing world to about 1,300 posted pages every month.
 
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Personnel News
Andrea Sheehan will join the Random House Publishing Group in early May as vp, director, digital strategy and business development, reporting to president Gina Centrello. Sheehan was previously vp, director of online sales and merchandising at Simon and Schuster.
 
Joe McNeely has joined Brilliance Audio, acquiring nonfiction adult titles. He was acquisitions director for Audio Renaissance (now Macmillan Audio) for many years, before forming his own company, Audio Evolution.
 
At Andrews McMeel's Accord division, Paula Hannigan joins the company this week as children's editor, based Denver. Most recently, she was an editor and author at Klutz.
 
At Scholastic's trade publishing division, Joanne Ruelos has joined the company as senior editor, licensed publishing. She had been a senior editor at McGraw Hill. Simon Tepas has moved over to the new position of backlist salesmanager. Simon has been with Scholastic since September 2005 as a coordinator in Scholastic's special markets department working with educational and consumer catalogs, coordinating direct mail, premium and outside book club sales. Previously, he worked in Random House’s special markets division.

Lots of New Jobs
We've added 9 more new job listings just since Friday at our industry-leading Job Board, the latest among over 115 opportunities still live in all.
 
For employers, we provide the unbeatable combination of the largest circulation in the business by far, a total focus on book publishing only, and the best prices anywhere.
 
And for job-seekers, we present great new possibilities every day and conveniences like an RSS ping to keep you posted on every new offering. Among the latest: 

Sr. Manager, Business Development - Digital  [Full Time]
Random House (New York, NY)
  
Publicity Assistant  [Full Time]
Oxford University Press (New York, NY)
  
Professional Publicist  [Full Time]
Oxford University Press (New York, NY)
  
Production Associate, Book Production [Part Time]
CosimoBooks (New York, NY)
  
Children's Book Project Editor  [Full Time]
Modern Publishing (New York, NY)
  
Photo Research Associate  [Full Time]
becker&mayer! (Bellevue, WA)
  
Acquiring Editor  [Full Time]
The Kent State University Press (Kent, OH)
  
Sales Representative  [Full Time]
Hachette Book Group USA (Houston, TX)
  
Publishing Sales Representative  [Full Time]
Oxford University Press (New York, NY)
   
Publishersmarketplace.com/jobs
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