Revolving Door

Ingram Content Group CEO Skip Prichard will leave the company on June 8. He will be replaced by Ingram chairman John R. Ingram.

Prichard (pictured) had this comment: “When John hired me five years ago, he shared his vision and I signed on to make that vision a reality.  I signed up to accomplish certain goals, and those goals have all been met one by one. With solid positions in all of our markets yielding terrific results, I feel I have accomplished what I set out to do. I now will do some consulting and then look for a new role that will consume me as much as this one has. I’ve enjoyed every minute of my time at Ingram.”

You can follow the outgoing CEO on his Twitter feed. Ingram is a Nashville-based company that works with 21,000 publishers, distributing books and digital content to “35,000 retailers, libraries, schools and distribution partners in over 200 countries.”

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Kelly Barrales-Saylor will jump from Sourcebooks to be the new editorial director at Albert Whitman & Company. She will start on May 21st.

Barrales-Saylor began as an editorial intern at Sourcebooks’ Sphinx Publishing imprint. She helped launch two of the company’s children’s books imprints, Sourcebooks Jabberwocky and Sourcebooks Fire.

Barrales-Saylor had this statement in the release: “Joining such an amazing team is a dream come true. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to publish books that empower children and make a difference in their lives.”

A number of publishing professionals have announced big job changes today.

Sara Nelson (pictured, via) is leaving O, The Oprah Magazine to serve as editorial director at Amazon.com Books. Publishers Weekly had the scoop: “A spokesperson for Amazon said Nelson ‘will be leading our editorial vision for books in the print and Kindle bookstores on Amazon.com.’”

Parul Sehgal will be a new preview editor at The New York Times Book Review.

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Novelist Jacquelyn Mitchard has joined F+W Media as the head of their new young adult fiction imprint, Merit Press Books. The imprint will release five titles this year and has thirteen books slated for 2013.

Oprah Winfrey selected Mitchard’s 1996 novel, The Deep End of the Ocean, as the first title to kick off her famous Book Club. Mitchard has written both fiction and nonfiction, publishing books for adult, young adult and children’s readers.

Mitchard gave this statement in the release: “I’d wanted to be an editor for years, but didn’t see myself in a huge box in Manhattan. F+W made me an offer I couldn’t refuse: the chance to work with new authors and established authors on something so important. It’s exactly where I want to be at this point in my career. Something in me said – you’re home.” (Photo Credit: James Schnepf)

Chantal Restivo-Alessi has been appointed chief digital officer at HarperCollins. She will report to HarperCollins Worldwide CEO Brian Murray.

Restivo-Alessi previously served as head of media corporate finance at ING Bank in London. She has also worked at Aegis Group, EMI Music and Booz & Company.

Murray had this statement in the release: “Her extensive expertise in strategy development and execution, as well as change management in the media space, makes her a perfect fit for HarperCollins as we look to expand the strategic partnerships required to grow in the future.”

Farrar, Straus and Giroux online marketing manager Ryan Chapman will serve as the new marketing director at Penguin Press.

He starts on April 23rd. Chapman blogged about the new position:

Penguin Press has a great list of authors (*cough* Zadie Smith Clay Shirky Nate Silver Thomas Pynchon *cough*) and a truly impressive roster of editors and publicists. I’m looking forward to painting with a bigger brush, as it were, and launching some nonfiction-driven pilot projects. If you see me at happy hour in the next few weeks, I apologize in advance for my nerdy enthusiasm. (And be sure to keep an eye out for some big Penguin Press news in the next month or two.) (Via Sarah Weinman)

Penguin Books associate publisher Stephen Morrison will serve as the new publisher at Macmillan’s Picador Books. He starts on April 30th.

Henry Holt publisher Stephen Rubin and FSG publisher Jonathan Galassi welcomed the new editor in a memo: “Stephen brings exactly the right combination of enthusiasm, fortitude, resourcefulness and experience to grow Picador into a dynamic division committed to publishing a wide range of paperback reprints, paperback originals , hardcover works of fiction and nonfiction and digital-only publications.  Stephen’s mandate is to make Picador one of the industry’s most undaunted, aggressive marketing machines, culling books from all of Macmillan’s divisions, including St. Martins, FSG and Holt.”

Picador publisher Frances Coady departed last month in a company restructuring. Previously, Morrison served as executive editor at Bloomsbury, a senior editor at Penguin and a senior scout at Maria B. Campbell Associates.

Jane Friedman has been appointed web editor at the Virginia Quarterly Review. She starts in June, tasked with expanding the literary journal’s “online and digital content and a larger social media presence.”

Friedman has served as the editorial director of Writer’s Digest, but she now serves as the assistant professor of e-media at the University of Cincinnati.

Virginia Quarterly Review publisher Jon Parrish Peede announced the news: “I had the pleasure of watching Jane serve on a National Endowment for the Arts funding panel, and I can state from firsthand experience that she is gifted, energetic, and deeply knowledgeable about publishing and new trends in the field. We are particularly excited about her leadership in developing a greater community of online readers for VQR.” (Via Calvin Reid)

Sadie Stein has been named the new editor of Paris Review Daily, the online counterpart to the prestigious literary journal. She starts on April 1st.

The current blog editor Deirdre Foley-Mendelssohn will lead the books section at Harper’s magazine.

Here’s more from the post: “During Deirdre’s tenure as editor of the Daily, our readership has doubled, and so has the amount we publish. Truly we have grown by leaps and bounds … You already know Sadie from her groundbreaking reports on wine cake and exotic meats and “the old ‘do I give my crush a sexually explicit book’ conundrum,” not to mention her weekly roundup, On the Shelf.” (Via Maud Newton)

After leaving in 2010 to work as editorial director at Penguin’s Putnam imprint, Marysue Rucci has returned to Simon & Schuster. She will now serve as editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster’s adult trade imprint.

Rucci spent 13 years at the publisher before heading to Penguin. Some of the titles on her list include Little Bee by Chris Cleave, The Spellman Files series by Lisa Lutz and The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper.

In other revolving door news, Marisa Russell will join Penguin Young Readers Group as publicity manager.

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