Jason Rekulak has been promoted to publisher of Quirk Books. In addition, Brett Cohen has been promoted to president at Quirk Books and David Borgenicht will take the role of Quirk Productions CEO.

Rekulak acquired and edited many of the house’s bestsellers including the mash-up title Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and the young adult novel Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.

A number of other publishing organizations have also announced promotions this week…

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A number of publishers announced new hires and promotions this week.

Tracy Behar has been promoted to executive editor and VP at Little, Brown and Company. She has been with this imprint for eight years.

Lania Adler now holds the title of vice president and senior director of marketing at HarperOne.

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Kerri Kolen will be moving to G.P. Putnam’s Sons at Penguin Group (USA).

Kolen will serve as executive editor and specialize in popular nonfiction. She will start her new position on February 25th.

Throughout Kolen’s career, she has worked at Simon & Schuster and Hyperion. Some of the titles on her list include A Stolen Life by Jaycee Dugard, Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher and HODA: How I Survived War Zones, Bad Hair, Cancer, and Kathie Lee by Hoda Kotb.

As writers make good on their New Year’s resolutions to finish their projects, it is important to ask: What do editors want this year?

The Andrew Lownie Literary Agency, a London-based organization, posed that question to fifty-six different editors from both the UK and the US.

The lists included Penguin Group (USA) senior editor Brent Howard (New American Library imprint), Random House UK editor Emma Buckley and Sidgwick & Jackson editorial director Ingrid Connell.

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Literary agent Irene Goodman founded a nonprofit called Publishing for Vision & Hearing (PubVH) in honor of her son, Rob, who suffers from Usher Syndrome.

Currently, PubVH is hosting a charity auction.

Those who are interested can place their bids until the end of December. Some of the items up for grabs include a picture book critique by veteran editor Nancy Paulsen (who now presides over her own imprint at Penguin Young Readers Group) and a partial critique by Movable Type Management co-founder/president Jason Ashlock.

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Anne Hoppe will be moving from HarperCollins Children’s Books to Clarion Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children’s Book Group.

Hoppe spent 18 years at HarperCollins. She will begin in her new role as senior executive editor starting January 23, 2013.

Some of the authors on her list include When I Grow Up author “Weird Al” Yankovic, Discworld series author Sir Terry Pratchett, Carnival of Souls author Melissa Marr and Animorphs series author Katherine Applegate. In a past interview, Yankovic talked about how he and Hoppe came together for his debut picture book project.

After a somewhat rough start, Manhattan is starting to “hit its stride,” says EIC Cristina Cuomo. The pub, which launched in the midst of the financial crisis, is unlike other city mags since it’s more like a national book with local flavor. And Cuomo, whose first issue with the pub was September’s, is on a mission to “give the magazine a personality and a sense of humor.”

Among her changes? A new section called “The Fictionist,” which welcomes anyone with literary chops be they veteran or newbie authors. Writers can pitch short stories or book excerpts.

For more info, read How To Pitch: Manhattan. [subscription required]

Lerner Publishing Group’s Carolrhoda Books occasionally accepts unagented submissions. According to editorial director Andrew Karre, the publisher will take young-adult manuscripts from October 1st until October 31st.

Follow this link to read all the details and Karre’s instructions. Karre added that he does not like university-aged protagonists, manuscripts that exceeds 100,000 words or books that “have series potential.” He prefers projects that feature unusual people, unfamiliar mythologies and doomed romance.

Karre included three tips for authors: “Things I require: That you follow my submission guidelines. That your cover letter be very brief and you not agonize over it for more than twenty minutes. Your extreme patience. I’m slow. I often return to manuscripts several times before I make a decision.”

As the number of self-published books grows, indie authors need editors more than ever. Kirkus Reviews launched new editorial services this year, one way for self-published authors to polish their work.

In this encore edition of the Morning Media Menu podcast, we spoke with Kirkus editorial director Perry Crowe about these new offerings. Press play below to listen…

Crowe explained: “Having been the indie editor at Kirkus and seeing lots and lots of self published books, I’ve seen some very basic mistakes–like confusing different versions of their/there/they’re and punctuation issues.  There are simple things that need to be caught because it jars the reader out of the reading experience.”

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On Twitter today, New York Times Magazine culture editor Adam Sternbergh offered advice for freelance writers–an invaluable peek inside the mind of an editor.

To help all the freelance writers in the audience, we’ve collected his advice into a handy Storify post below…

If you want to see all the responses generated by his posts, you can check out the #BetterFreelancer hashtag on Twitter. For all the editors in the audience, Sternbergh also started a #BetterEditor hashtag. (Via The Awl)

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