Last Straw for Cody's
After taking brief refuge in a new smaller Berkeley location in March, Cody's Books has now closed for good -- surprising customers on Friday with a locked door and a sign reading "Cody's Books is Closed -- Thank You." The staff was told that morning, and had no prior warning.
 
Owner Hiroshi Kagawa of the Japanese company IBC Publishing said later in a statement "unfortunately, my current business is not strong enough or rich enough to support Cody's." He added, "Cody's is my treasure and more than that, Cody's is a real friend of [the] Berkeley community and will be missed."
 
Co-founder of the original store Pat Cody aid the closing "makes me very sad. We worked so hard and we put so much into it, and it meant a lot to the community. It's a big loss."
Berkeley Daily Plant
SF Chronicle
 
Meanwhile, in Washington, DC, an independent children's bookstore Hooray for Books is opening in the space vacated by A Likely Story last November, run by two former staffers of that store, Trish Brown and Ellen Klein.
Washington Post

Children's Line Sold to RC2
Publications International is selling their children's book division to RC2 for $163 million in cash. The line, which had sales of approximately $112 million and operating income margin "in the mid-teens" as of their most recent full fiscal year will be used to bolster RC2's Learning Curve brand and early learning platform.
Release

Blackwell to Roll Out Espresso Machines
Blackwell will be the first UK retailer to put Espresso book machines in stores, planning to add them to all 60 locations followed a more limited trial this fall. (So far the machines are in place in just 11 locations worldwide.)

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:

• A New Fiction Scene in Argentina
• Suit Over Godfather Spinoff
• Conservative Publisher Says Goodbye to NYT

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Personnel News
Deputy editor of The Bookseller magazine Joel Rickett is leaving to join Penguin UK as editorial director, starting at the end of August.
 
Borders Group has promoted Jennifer Northcutt to fiction buyer for Borders and Waldenbooks, reporting to Micha Hershman, merchandising director, fiction and Diversity. She was the young adult buyer in the children's group.
 
Katie Rose has been named vp, director of marketing, adult books at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, based in the Boston office. She has held various positions in college publishing and was most recently vp of marketing for Houghton Mifflin's College division.
 
Anne McPeak has joined A Public Space as managing editor. She was managing editor at Words Without Borders, and associate editor at The Hudson Review.
 
In the Crown publicity department, Dyana Messina and Alice Peisch have both been promoted to associate publicist. Both have been there for over two years.
 
Back on her blog Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, Sarah Weinman picks up an acknowledgment by author James Grippando that editor Carolyn Marino has retired. "It could be argued that Carolyn Marino WAS crime fiction over at HarperCollins."
Confessions
 

More New Jobs
We've added another 7 more new jobs to our industry-leading Job Board since Friday, the latest among close to 100 listings in all still live from the past month.
 
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:
 
Senior Editor/Executive Editor - HarperOne  [Full Time]
HarperCollins Publishers (San Francisco, CA)
 
Publicity Assistant  [Full Time]
Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ)
 
Editor  [Full Time]
Ave Maria Press (Notre Dame, IN)
 
Marketing Associate  [Full Time]
HarperCollins Children's Books (New York, NY)
 
Assistant Publicist  [Full Time]
HaperCollins Publishers (New York, NY)
 
Senior Publicist  [Full Time]
The Perseus Books Group (New York, NY)
 
Designer-Covers  [Full Time]
Kensington Publishing Corp. (New York, NY)
 
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