Tuesday, May 09, 2017

Publishers Lunch


Today's Meal


Wiley president and CEO Mark Allin has resigned, effective immediately, "for family reasons." Chairman of the board Matthew Kissner will serve as interim ceo while the company searches for a successor. He says in the announcement, "We understand and support [Allin's] decision to step down for family reasons and are grateful for his many accomplishments. We wish him and his family the very best." Allin was ceo for less than two years, taking over after Stephen Smith stepped down to focus on his battle with urological cancer in 2015, passing away the following year. The company's shares fell more than 3 percent in the first hour of trading on the news.
Bonnier has promoted Perminder Mann to lead their UK publishing group, overseeing Bonnier Zaffre, Igloo Books and Kings Road Publishing. Dan Shepherd left his position as ceo of Igloo Books, with a replacement to be named. COO of Kings Road Jon Perdoni will work under Mann as COO of Bonnier Publishing UK.

Eileen Lawrence has been promoted to associate publisher for Algonquin Children's.

Rebranding
Book development company Paper Lantern Lit is rebranding as Glasstown Entertainment, with Lexa Hillyer as president of publishing and Lauren Oliver as president of production. The company says that the change reflects their expansion into both film and TV, as well as adult fiction, building on their foundation in young adult and children's literature.

Glasstown has hired a full-time Los Angeles development executive, Lynley Bird (most recently vp of development at June Pictures), and their production efforts will look for finished scripts and novels to adapt for TV and film, as well as develop original ideas directly for the screen. Recent film sales include rights to The Hunger, a parable that "reimagines the Donner Party with a Walking Dead-style twist," to Scott Free and 20th Century Fox. At Warner Brothers, they are developing a TV show about "an insular group of increasingly ineffectual and disenchanted gods passing themselves off as mortals," and with Roth-Kirschenbaum Films, they are working an "epic disaster movie that reimagines the global collision of science and religion as one between a mythic force of destruction and the modern world."

Bookselling

Book Culture, the bookstore with three locations in New York City, announced on Facebook that it will add a fourth store in Long Island City, near the Court Square subway stop.

Amazon has
leased a 10,000-square-foot retail space in Georgetown for another bookstore, according to the ceo of the landlord, Vornado Realty Trust. It would be the thirteenth known or announced Amazon Books location, and is on the same block where a big Barnes & Noble was located until it closed at the end of 2011.

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