Tuesday, November 05, 2013

A New Name for Random House Mondadori & other news

Publishers Lunch

Now that Penguin Random House owns all of the Spanish-language company founded and still operating as Random House Mondadori, they are taking the logical step of renaming the unit. It will be called Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial. Additionally, the group's Literatura Mondadori imprint will change its name to Literatura Random House. Aside from the new names, there are no other changes at the division, which remains under the leadership of ceo Núria Cabutí.
She says in the announcement, "Today we begin our life as Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial, bringing with us the fantastic legacy of our history in Spanish-language publishing and the pride of being part of the first truly global trade publishing company. We will continue to publish with passion a wide array of authors, and our priority will be to continue to grow as both a print and digital publisher."

Laura Ferguson will join Open Road Media later this month as vp, special markets. Previously, she was director of premium, corporate and customer driven publishing at Simon & Schuster.

Emily Keyes has joined Foreword Literary as an agent. Previously she was an agent at the L. Perkins Agency.

French spy novelist Gerard de Villiers, 83, died Thursday in Paris of pancreatic cancer. De Villiers was the author of 200 novels featuring CIA contractor Malko Linge, the first appearing in 1964 and the last published in France last month. Five of his novels will be published by Vintage beginning in 2014, which marks the first major launch of his fiction in English in the US and Canada.

Pierre Lemaitre has won France's most top literary award, the Prix Goncourt, for his World War I epic Au Revoir Là-Haut. Quercus recently introduced Lemaitre to English-speaking audiences with ALEX, part of a projected trilogy (excerpted in our free Publishers Lunch Buzz Books Fall/Winter free ebook).

The shortlist was announced for the UK's biggest nonfiction award, the Samuel Johnson Prize:

Margaret Thatcher: The Authorised Biography, Charles Moore
Under Another Sky, Charlotte Higgins
The Pike, Lucy Hughes-Hallett
A Sting In The Tale by Dave Goulson
Empires of the Dead: How One Man's Vision Led to the Creation of WW1's War Graves, David Crane
Return of a King, William Dalrymple


In other awards news, Goodreads is conducting the "opening round" of public voting for their Best Books of 2013.

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