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Kathleen Schmidt Joins Weinstein Books as Director of Publicity

Kathleen Schmidt will be the new publicity director of Weinstein Books. She will join the publisher (a Perseus Books Group and Weinstein Company partnership) on July 1.

Currently,  Schmidt runs her own publicity firm, KMS Public Relations–working with around 120 books a year. You can follow her work on Twitter. In the past, she served as director of publicity at Atria Books, director of publicity at Dutton and Gotham Books and a publicist at Pocket Books. Here’s more from the release:

At Weinstein Books, Kathleen will personally create and implement digital and traditional publicity campaigns for all hardcover, e-books, trade paper original and trade paper reprint titles on the list, and will work alongside Publishing Director Georgina Levitt and Editorial Director Amanda Murray.


Digital Tools for Crime Writers

Crime journalist Steve Lillebuen painted a complex and spooky picture of a killer in The Devil’s Cinema: The Untold Story Behind Mark Twitchell’s Kill Room.

We caught up with the journalist to find out what digital tools he used to build his book. Lillebuen explained how he used valuable tools like OCR software and the Wayback Machine to explore the killer’s life. We’ve embedded the complete interview below, but here’s an excerpt:

My advice, however, is to treat the Internet as just another tool and not abandon old research and journalism skills. You still have to get out there and have good contacts, speak to a lot of sources, ask them questions, door knock, be very patient, and be prepared to be yelled at. Nobody loves a police reporter, as Edna Buchanan liked to say. You’re prying into people’s lives during their most traumatic moment. You’re bound to face a lot of abuse. My book research ended up straddling both the digital and the real world. I spent a year interviewing the killer in prison. He didn’t have access to a computer and could rarely make phone calls, so he ended up sending me more than 350 pages of hand-written letters.

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Jamie Oliver Changes Publishers

Celebrity chef, author and Food Revolution host Jamie Oliver has jumped to HarperCollins’ Ecco imprint after working with Hyperion on earlier books.

Ecco will publish the first book in fall 2014 with another book coming one year later. The publisher did not reveal the subjects of the books. According to the release, the chef sold more than two million copies of 30-Minute Meals in the UK. Oliver had this statement about his change of publisher:

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have worked with such a supportive publisher in Hyperion but I am really excited about this new relationship.  It is an honor for me to join the company of the great chefs on Ecco’s roster.  Many of them are my friends and I look forward to this partnership.

How To Turn Your Twitter Page into a Book

Do you want to share your tweets with your grandchildren someday? Maybe you should make a book.

AppNewser has collected five different services that will turn your Twitter feed into a book. Check it out: 

Twournal: “Twournal allows you to create, buy and sell twitter books printed from your tweets. All Twournals have color covers, can include replies and photos from services such as Twitpic and Yfrog in color or black and white. You can choose a custom picture for your front cover. Select which tweets you want to start and end at. And you can add a dedication message to appear after your title.”

Most Searched Authors & Books on Google

This month, William Shakespeare is the most searched for author on Google and The Bible is the most searched for book. Below, we’ve posted the top ten most searched for authors on Google.

Google has started automatically updating monthly charts for the top trending books and the top trending authors on the search engine.  TNW has more about the new tool:

Today, Google releases a new and improved version of the product with new charts, updated monthly, of the most-searched people, places and things in more than 40 categories with the ability to filter by 11 countries. PR companies and their customers now have another metric to be highly aware of. Everything from business people through to cars are ranked for the world to see. Each category goes back to 2004.

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CoverGirl to Release Hunger Games-Inspired Make-Up Line

CoverGirl has created a Hunger Games-inspired makeup line called the “Capitol Collection.”

Lionsgate struck a sponsorship deal for the Catching Fire adaptation with the cosmetics company. Paula Kupfer, the vice president of promotions and consumer products at Lionsgate explained in the release:

We are excited to announce COVERGIRL as the exclusive makeup partner for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. The exquisite beauty and style in the world of the Capitol is a focal point of this film. Partnering with an innovative brand like COVERGIRL to create an additional layer of beauty storytelling and inspiration for the fans is new territory that we’re delighted to explore.

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Katherine Boo Wins the 2013 Helen Bernstein Book Award

Journalist and author Katherine Boo has won the New York Public Library’s 2013 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Behind The Beautiful Forevers.

The $15,000 award goes to “journalists whose books have brought clarity and public attention to important issues, events, or policies.” Boo had this comment as she received the award:

Consistently, the recipients of this award make the argument through their work that you can’t just complain or accept that the American public don’t give a damn about genocide in Rwanda or ruined lives in the inner city … What this award symbolizes to me is that as a journalist working in the field, you have to report harder and work harder, until you make the American public give a damn. That’s what good writing with a capital ‘W’ is. Over the years, the Library has honored some bad-ass women, and has always honored hard-core, fierce reporting.

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Score That Job: Hachette Book Group

Do you have the New York Times Best Seller list memorized? Do you have a passion for books and want to get into the publishing business?

In this episode of “Score That Job,” career expert, author and mediabistro editor Vicki Salemi sat down with Andrea Weinzimer of Hachette Book Group to get the inside dirt on what they’re looking for in a candidate.

Here a few tips — know the industry and know which authors they publish (hint: rhymes with James Patterson, Nicholas Sparks, David Sedaris…). Or just watch the video.

You can view our other MediabistroTV productions on our YouTube Channel.

Newly Discovered Pearl S. Buck Novel Coming

A 40-year-old unpublished Pearl S. Buck manuscript was recently discovered in storage, and Open Road Integrated Media and InkWell Management will team up to publish the book.

The Eternal Wonder will be published on October 22, bringing the Pulitzer & Nobel Prize-winning author’s newly discovered work as a digital book and paperback. Open Road already publishes 28 backlist books by Buck, including The Big Wave and The Good Earth. Here’s more about the book, from the release:

The Eternal Wonder, an Open Road E-riginal, is a personal and passionate fictional exploration of the themes that meant so much to Buck in her life. It tells the coming-of-age story of Randolph Colfax, an extraordinarily gifted young man whose search for meaning and purpose leads him to New York, England, Paris, a mission patrolling the demilitarized zone in Korea that will change his life forever—and, ultimately, to love.

Penguin Settles for $75 Million in eBook Pricing Suit

Penguin will pay $75 million in damages and “costs and fees to resolve all antitrust claims relating to eBook pricing”–settling with 33 state attorneys general and consumers in a suit led by Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro.

The suit revolved around allegations of price fixing with the agency model for eBook pricing. The publisher issued a brief statement:

Penguin has also committed to the State Attorneys General to abide by the same injunctive relief as previously agreed in a separate settlement with the Department of Justice. In anticipation of reaching this agreement, Pearson had made a $40m provision for settlement in its 2012 accounts. An incremental charge will be expensed in Pearson’s 2013 statutory accounts as part of the accounting for the Penguin Random House joint-venture.

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