Barnes & Noble’s Discover Great New Writers program director Jill Lamar will serve as the next editor-in-chief at Henry Holt. She will start on March 14th.

Lamar has lead Barnes & Noble’s program since 1999. Her publishing career began at Dell, where she served as an associate editor in the 1990s.  She also worked as an acquisitions and project editor at BDD Audio–acquiring 100 titles a year.

Henry Holt publisher Stephen Rubin praised Lamar in a memo: “Given this diverse background and the current volatile marketplace, Jill’s often uncanny and savvy knowledge of what makes a book sell will, I believe, be brought to a higher level of fruition as she helps shape the Holt editorial profile, making us a major player in the publishing of literary and commercial books of both fiction and nonfiction.  Her warm and engaging personality and her can-do enthusiasm, combined with her publishing smarts, has impressed the publishing, agenting and book buying communities for more than a decade.”